Maryam Haidari

Maryam Haidari, born in 1984, is from the Khuzestan province of Iran. She is the translator into Persian, from Arabic, of noted Arab poets such as Mahmoud Darwish and Sargon Boulus. She has also translated numerous Persian and Afghan poets, as well as Persian travel writers, into Arabic. She is the author of the collection Bab Muareb (A Door Ajar) and the 2018 recipient of the Arab world’s prestigious Ibn Battuta Prize for Travel Literature. Her latest book (2022) is Persian Carpets, a collection of modern Persian poetry translated into Arabic. She is also the Culture editor of the Arabic language journal Raseef 22 in Beirut, the premier journal of art, literature, history, and politics out of Beirut. And her translations into Persian and English (with Salar Abdoh) of the writings of the tenth century Arab mystic, Al-Niffari, is forthcoming in 2024. She lives and works in Tehran, Iran.

Salar Abdoh is an Iranian novelist, essayist and translator, who divides his time between New York and Tehran. He is the author of the novels Poet Game (2000), Opium (2004), Tehran at Twilight (2014), and Out of Mesopotamia (2020) and the editor of the short story collection Tehran Noir (2014). His latest novel, A Nearby Country Called Love, published last year by Viking, was described by the New York Times as “a complex portrait of interpersonal relationships in contemporary Iran.” Salar Abdoh also teaches in the graduate program in Creative Writing at the City College of New York at the City University of New York.