“A Day that Lingers with Us Still : Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here”
Essay: World Literature Today, May 2012

“My Father’s House” (pages 7-10) in sententiously Illuminated Verses: Poetries of the Islamic World, 2011 copyright City Lore and Poets House

Among my father’s favorite quatrains (roba‘i) were the following: Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears To-day of past Regrets and future Fears To-morrow?—Why, To-morrow I may be Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand Years.

“My Iranian Cousin and I Try to Have Hope”
New America Media, 2009

My cousin reassures me that things will change — little by little perhaps. She also assures me that Iranians are a peaceful people. They do not want war, don’t want intervention, don’t want to destroy their country from the inside out.

“Writing from a Complex Ethnic Identity” in Multicultural Literature in the United States Today
United States of America Embassy, February 9, 2009

It has taken some time for American readers to appreciate the complexities, hardships, and beauty of the Iranian immigrant experience — and the body of literature that now describes that experience. A young but flourishing literature of the Iranian Diaspora has finally taken hold.