Iranian women's voices
Inspired by the poet and filmmaker, Forough Farrokhzad (1934–1967), creative women in Iran and the diaspora reflect on art and the constraints of present-day Iran and dream for the future, edited by Shara Atashi, Sana Nassari and Marjorie Lotfi.
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Iranian women’s voices
Sana Nassari
"Inspired by the poet and filmmaker, Forough Farrokhzad, who defied convention and the patriarchy, Iranian writers and artists reflect on present-day Iran and dream for the future."
Sana Nassari introduces 'Iranian women's voices' inspired by one of Iran's most celebrated poets, Forough Farrokhzad.
My bejewelled land
Shara Atashi
"My mother’s last words to me were, 'There is a giant in you and a weakling. Don't let the weakling prevail."
Shara Atashi takes a poem by Forough Farrokhzad as a starting point for her reflections on women and Iranian identity.
Iranian women’s defiant art of resistance
Sana Nassari
"Women’s opposition to tyranny often takes the form of performance – a powerful expression of personal autonomy and public defiance."
Sana Nassari writes on the extraordinary acts of Iranian women who have pushed against the rigid boundaries of patriarchy.
Song and Wind
Marjorie Lotfi
"How can I / have spoken out loud for forty / years without a mother tongue?"
The poet Marjorie Lotfi's poem sequence 'Song and Wind'.
The return of the God of the 1980s
Atash Shahkarami
"And still, our greatest battle – after survival – is the fight for equality."
A dispatch by Atash Shahkarami from Tehran in July 2025, as events are shaped by the misguided decisions of a handful of reckless old men.
A three-act dream
Razieh Khoshnood
"A policeman drags me down to the street and shoves me into a Morality Police van. I wake up screaming."
Razieh Khoshnood's prose poem in three acts about women confronting the old order in Iran, 60 years after Farrokhzad's death.
Poems of resistance
Forouz Zarei
"Leaving Iran felt like a kind of death. But after Woman, Life, Freedom, I told myself: Be who you are."
Forouz Zarei on the healing power of art.
Flesh
Sepideh Jodeyri
"And you say, how cool and juicy is my flesh."
A poem by Sepideh Jodeyri writing from her present home in Washington D.C.
No country for filmmakers
Anahit Behrooz
"Our country may have become unrecognisable to us, but exiled Iranian filmmakers are also unrecognisable to their country."
Anahit Behrooz reflects on the emotional cost and jeopardy faced by filmmakers in Iran.
Revisiting Forough Farrokhzad’s ironic depiction of the ‘Frontier of Gems’
Laleh Atashi
"To imagine a better world, we must first acknowledge that countless sacrifices have rendered society indifferent to injustice."
Dr Laleh Atashi revisits Forough Farrokhzad's poem ‘O, You Frontier of Gems’ 60 years after her death.