April 25: "A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran"

A talk by Roya Hakakian, poet, documentarian, and author of the widely acclaimed memoir,
Journey from the Land of No; a Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran.

When: Monday, April 25 8:00 PM

Where: Taylor University, Upland IN Student Union Building

ROYA HAKAKIAN has collaborated on over a dozen hours of programming for some of the most prestigious journalism units on network television, inlcluding 60 Minutes Sunday and 60 Minutes II as well as on A& E's "Travels With Harry" hour, and ABC Documentary Specials with Peter Jennings, Discovery and The Learning Channel. Commissioned by UNICEF, Roya's most recent film, Armed and Innocent , on the subject of the involvement of underage children in wars around the world, has been selected among best short documentaries at several festivals, most recently as an official entry of the 2003 Telluride Mountain Film Festival.


Roya is the author of two highly acclaimed collections of poetry, the first of which, For the Sake of Water, received honorable mention in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World and was nominated as the poetry book of the year by Iran News in 1993. She writes for numerous publications, including the Washington Post, and the Weekly Forward, and is a contributor to NPR's Weekend Edition.


Most recently, Roya was the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and the 2003 Dewitt / Wallace Reader's Digest Fellowship in writing. She is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her memoir of growing up a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No (Crown) is Elle Magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of 2004.

Hakakian's appearance is sponsored by the Taylor student literary journal Parnassus, and the student group, Integration of Faith and Culture (IFC).

If you saw Azar Nafisi last year when she visited Butler, you may want to make the drive to Upland to hear Roya Hakakian. Hakakian's memoir Journey from the Land of No is quite different than Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran ... but I think even more moving emotionally. For yet a third perspective on being female during Iran's Islamic Revolution, you should check out Marjane Satrapi's graphic novels (not comic books!) Persepolis and Persepolis 2 ... or read the review.

This event is free and open to the public.