Firoozeh Dumas

In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father’s glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since.

Howard Lee

Howard Lee grew up in Kenya before moving to the UK to study. He first met his Iranian wife in London University, where he began a lifelong fascination with Iran. Lee wrote and illustrated the children’s book Jamshid and the Lost Mountain of Light after a visit to Persepolis, in Iran. He was inspired by the sight of his son Daniel gazing through the same windows as the biblical Daniel may have looked through, some 2500 years ago. The novel is set in the reign of Darius the Great, and is part historical fiction, part fantasy.

Davar Ardalan

Her full name, Iran Davar Ardalan, inspired the 2004 NPR/American Radioworks series, “My Name is Iran.” In the stories she explored the country for which she was named, tracing her Iranian heritage and her own experiences after the 1979 Islamic revolution. In April of 2002, Ardalan and NPR’s Jacki Lyden received a Gracie award from the American Women in Radio and Television for the NPR documentary “Loss and Its Aftermath,” the story of Israeli and Palestinian parents speaking about the deaths of their children in the conflict.

Persis Karim

Persis Karim was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area by her French mother, Evelyne M. Karim and her late Iranian father, Alexander Karim. She grew up feeling a little different and spent a good deal of her childhood explaining an identity she couldn’t fully grasp. During the 1979 hostage crisis, she had a kind of awakening. After graduating from college at UC Santa Cruz, she felt an immense longing to learn more about her Iranian heritage.

Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi is a contemporary graphic novelist, illustrator and children’s book author. Her graphic novel Persepolis, about her life in Iran during the revolution in Iran has drawn wide international acclaim.  She grew up in Tehran in a progressive family. She attended school there and witnessed, as a child, the growing oppression of civil liberties and the everyday-life consequences of Iranian politics, including the fall of the Shah, the early regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and the first years of the Iran-Iraq war.

Azadeh Moaveni

Azadeh Moaveni is Tehran correspondent for TIME Magazine. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad (2005), and co-author of Iran Awakening (2006).  She previously worked for the Los Angeles Times as a reporter covering the Iraq war, and its regional reverberations. Before joining the Times, she reported around the Middle East for TIME, covering Islamic militant groups, Arab media, political Shiism, Arab/Iranian youth culture, and the Iranian reform movement.

Rostam Comic Book Project

The Shahnameh’s main hero warrior, Rostam seemed perfectly suited to the American Comic Book form. In keeping with the Comic Book tradition of blending rich folklore from the melting pot of world cultures, into the American tradition, Bruce, Jamie & Cameron launched the world’s first adaptation of Shahnameh stories into this genre.

After a few years of research, translation and adaptation, Bruce Bahmani, put together a trilogy of stories, suited for the creation of the books, in which the tradition of Ferdowsi’s technique of using the double entendre, one in which the main story overlays, a deeper message or fable of wisdom and advice, could be accomplished. This comic book project is an adaptation of the Shahnameh or Book of Kings by the famous Persian poet, Ferdowsi.

Niloufar Talebi

Award-winning translator, Niloufar Talebi was born in London to Iranian parents. She received a BA in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine, and an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. She studied theater with Jean Shelton and has produced and performed nationally. Her translations have been anthologized and published in Two Lines, Poetry International, CIRCUMFERENCE, Agni on-line and Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and she is the guest editor of the Spring 2006 issue of Rattapallax.