Image by Forough Farrokhzad, 1965, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

“In the latest edition of WritersMosaic Quarterly artists confront the realities of Iran today – while daring to dream of a new future.” Sana Nassari

WritersMosaic Quarterly 02: Iranian Women’s Voices brings Iranian women writers and artists to reflect on the present situation in Iran, and to imagine and dream for the future. The publication features a selection of carefully curated and provoking contributions from Sana Nassari, Marjorie Lofti, Shara Atashi, Razieh Khoshnood, Forouz Zarei, Sepideh Jodeyri, Atash Shahkarami, and Dr. Laleh Atashi. 

Inspired by the work of Forough Farrokhzad – Iran’s most celebrated female poet and filmmaker – contributions are varied: some responding directly to Farrokhzad’s poems, whilst others pass only a glance at her work. Farrokhzad’s poetry flows through the writing – uniting different backgrounds and themes, including migration, war, repression, and the enduring struggle for resistance in Iran.

The online guest edition will include an additional essay from author and journalist Anahit Behrooz, and will be available on WritersMosaic. 

WritersMosaic Quarterly is produced by and primarily features writers of the global majority, both in and outside the UK. It is published as an insert in The Bookseller, the UK’s main book trade

magazine. While its placement in The Bookseller ensures visibility to the wider publishing industry and beyond, the Quarterly is first and foremost a space for writers to experiment and explore outside of their usually designated ‘social box’; showcasing new, and exciting writing of the highest standard.

Future editions will cover a variety of topics, from the revolutionary legacy of Frantz Fanon, and translating poetry from page to film. The first edition, Malcolm X: By and means necessary, was published in May 2025.

About the contributors:

Dr. Laleh Atashi is an Iranian writer and lecturer of English literature at Shiraz University, Iran. Her work focuses on cultural studies, painting, and representations of girlhood in literature. Her current research explores Iranian folklore with focus on the female body and society.

Shara Atashi is an Iranian-born writer and translator. She writes creative non-fiction, fiction and poetry. Previously a lawyer based in Germany, Atashi relocated to the UK, where she became a writer and translator. Her works have subsequently been published in a number of journals. In 2021 Atashi was awarded a place at Literature Wales’s campaign against racism, and she is among the winners of the 2022 Stephen Spender Prize poetry translation competition. Atashi lives in Aberystwyth, Wales.

Sepideh Jodeyri is an Iranian poet, literary critic, translator and journalist who has published several works, including five poetry collections, a collection of short stories and an anthology of her poems. Her articles and interviews have been published in newspapers and magazines in Iran and Europe. Jodeyri has also translated poetry books by Edgar Allan Poe and Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the graphic novel, Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh into Persian. After her works were banned in Iran, Jodeyri left the country. She now lives in the United States, where she continues to write and work in exile. Jodeyri is also the founder of Khorshid, the Iranian Women’s Poetry Prize – one of the only three non-governmental and independent poetry prizes in Iran.

Razieh Khoshnood (born 1977) is an Iranian poet and translator. She published her first poetry collection in 2005, winning first prize at the Youth Poetry Festival. Holding a Master’s degree in Dramatic Literature from Tehran University of Art, she is widely published and has authored four poetry books and translated twenty works from English into Farsi, including Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri (2021).

Marjorie Lofti is a Scottish-Iranian poet whose work engages with the experience of displacement and its impacts on families and individuals. Her debut collection, The Wrong Person to Ask (2023), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2024, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Saltire Prize. Lofti was also joint winner of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021. She is one of the British Council/UNESCO Cities of Literature 2024 ILX 10 ‘Rising Stars of UK Writing.’ Her poetry has been published widely in journals and anthologies in the UK and US (including The Rialto, Gutter, Ambit, Magma, Rattle and Staying Human), and been included in Best Scottish Poems 2021 and in London’s Poems on the Underground. She is currently finishing a memoir about her interrupted childhood inIran and subsequent arrival in a small town in Ohio.

Sana Nassari is a British-Iranian poet, writer, translator, and art historian based in London. She has published one novel and a collection of short stories, These Two Roses (Exiled Writer Ink, 2020). Her poetry collection O Delilah won second prize for an unpublished collection at the Journalists PoetryAward and Departure, a second collection of her poetry has been recently published by Morvarid publishing house in Iran. Nassari has also translated two novels by the American writer Karen Joy Fowler and The Graveyard by Polish writer Marek Hłasko into Farsi. Her translation of The Certificate by Isaac Bashevis Singer is forthcoming.

Atash Shahkarami is an Iranian painter whose work is grounded in her own lived experience. Herpaintings and writings explore the life of a woman in the Middle East, shaped by inequality, violence, and the search for justice. In 2022, her niece Nika, who lived with her, was killed during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests. Since then, Karami has devoted her art and voice to seeking truth and supporting the movement that defines this struggle.

Forouz Zarei was born in Tehran in 1984, and raised in Abadan in the aftermath of the Iran Iraq war. Forouz studied Fine Art at Islamshahr Tehran University and later moved to Berlin, where she currently resides with her partner and young family. In her artwork, Forouz presents a collection of delicate and seemingly vulnerable, unframed paintings on paper. They represent gashes, wounds, barbed wire and faceless embryonic figures, hung up, tied down or pushed down by force. Herviscerally startling images are often accompanied by lines of Farsi poetry.