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Iran

Article

Letter from Evin Prison

Narges Mohammadi is an Iranian writer, journalist and human rights defender. She fights for women’s rights, freedom of...

Text: Narges Mohammadi September 06 2023
Fiction

Honesty is the best policy!

The author of this short story remains anonymous. She sent the text a few weeks after that the protests had started in September. Whether she is free or behind bars remains unknown to us. The short...

Author: anonymous December 11 2022
Fiction

Our Codename is Jina

On September 13, Mahsa Zhina Amini was arrested by Iran's morality police for wearing her veil the wrong way. On September 16, she died under suspicious circumstances. This was the start of the...

Text: anonymous November 13 2022
Article

A message from Sanandaj

Neda is a Kurdish woman and human rights activist who participates in and leads the protests in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj in Iran. The regime's forces have occupied the center of the city and the...

Text: Neda from Kurdistan November 04 2022
Poetry

From a distance

In 2015 the Iranian poet and activist Fatemeh Ekhtesari was sentenced to 99 lashes and eleven and a half years of imprisonment for alleged crimes against the Islamic regime—immoral conduct and...

Text: Fatemeh Ekhtesari March 13 2020
Article

Iran’s virtual iron curtain

In Iran in November 2019 the whole of the Internet was shut down. 83 million people were suddenly isolated from the world. This was the regime’s answer to the people’s protest against rising petrol...

Text: Anonymous February 18 2020
Article

Role of women in Iranian science fiction and fantasy

Over the last two decades, the publication and sale of science fiction and fantasy literature has increased significantly in Iran. For a long time, these books have more or less only involved a male...

Text: Mina Talebli November 29 2018
Article

Go back to your house

The author, publisher and critic Fereshteh Ahmadi’s states in her essay that “vagueness” is a keyword for the understanding of contemporary stories by Iranian female authors. What is the situation for...

Text: Fereshteh Ahmadi November 29 2018
Article

Language and rights in Iranian Queer community

Benyamin Farnam is a documentary filmmaker and photographer from Iran, with human rights and LGBT perspectives as main topics. For PEN/Opp Farnam gives an analysis of the situation for LGBT...

Text: Benyamin Farnam January 07 2018
Poetry

Immortality

Yasaman R. Choube was born in Iran and now lives in exile. For PEN/Opp she has written a moving story about love, oppression and loss.

Text: Yasaman R. Choube December 18 2017
Poetry

Poems in exile

Iranian poet, LGBT and human rights activist Elham Malekpoor has published several collections of poetry, most of which have been censored in Iran. She particularly deals with child labour and queer...

Text: Elham Malekpoor December 16 2014
Fiction

Before the lunar eclipse

Iran is a country full of paradoxes. While the state has enacted some of the strictest laws in the world when it comes to same-sex relationships, sex change for homosexuals has become a thriving...

Text: Ramesh Safavi December 16 2014

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