Zara Houshmand

Zara Houshmand is an Iranian American writer who was raised in the Philippines and received her BA in English Literature from London University. Her books include Running Toward Mystery: The Adventure of an Unconventional Life with Tenzin Priyadarshi (2020) and A Mirror Garden (A. A. Knopf, 2007), co-authored with Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. Her poetry has been published in the anthologies Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been (University of Arkansas Press, 2006) and A World Between (George Braziller, 1999) and in journals including Caesura, Persian Book Review, West Coast Line, Di-verse-city, and Texas Observer. Her play The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be was produced at the Burbage Theatre in Los Angeles (1986). Her translations from the Persian received the first commissioning grant from the National Theatre Translation Fund, and have been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Literature from the Axis of Evil (New Press, 2006), Words Without Borders (Anchor, 2007) and Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (Arcade, 2006). As editor for the Mind and Life Institute, she has been responsible for a series of books representing a longterm dialogue between Buddhism and Western science. She has also pioneered the development of virtual reality as an art form; her installation Beyond Manzanar (with Tamiko Thiel), now in the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Art, has been widely discussed in works on new media and critical theory. A writer, editor, and literary translator whose work crosses boundaries and cultural divides, she lives in the mountains of California.