by Simin Danishvar

Simin Danishvar, one of Iran’s best-known pioneers of women’s writing, was born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1921. She attended missionary schools in Shiraz, and in 1948 moved to the capital of Tehran to study Persian literature at Tehran University, from which Danishvar (also spelled Daneshvar) would receive her doctorate. At the university, she met and later married Jalal Al-i Ahmad (1923-1969), a prominent socially engaged writer who later in life composed a strong critique of westernization in Iran under Reza Shah Pahlavi entitled Gharbzadigi (Plagued by the West, also in WLAIT 6: Middle Eastern Literatures and Their Times). Danishvar traveled to the United States in 1952 on a Fulbright Fellowship to study creative writing at Stanford University in California. Becoming a teacher, she later joined the faculty at Tehran University. Danishvar’s earliest works include the collection of short stories Atash-i...