About the Author

Fatemeh Shams was born in Mashhad in northeastern Iran in 1983. By the age of sixteen, she had won the silver medal in the National Olympiad of Literature. She received her undergraduate degree from Tehran University and her PhD from Oxford. In 2013 she won the prize for the best young Persian poet in the Jaleh Esfahani poetry festival in London. She is Assistant Professor of Persian Literature, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. Her book of poetry, When They Broke Down the Door, translated into English by Dick Davis, won the 2016 Latifeh Yarshater Award of the Persian Heritage Foundation in New York City.