Burnt Oak

Dr. Fatemeh Shams is a Persian poet, literary scholar, and translator. She currently teaches Persianate literature and history at the University of Pennsylvania and is a core faculty member of the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Her work focuses on the intersection of literature, politics, and society. Shams is interested in the evolution of poetry and patronage in the Persian literary tradition and the representation and transformation of this relationship in modern Iran. She previously taught poetry at Oxford University and SOAS University of London. She has published three award-winning poetry collections in Persian and English. Her book Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-Option Under Islamic Republic (Oxford University Press, 2021), explores the role of poetry and poetics in the political ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Armen Davoudian is the author of The Palace of Forty Pillars, published in 2024 by Tin House (US) and Corsair (UK). His poems and translations from the Persian appear in Poetry, The Hopkins Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. Armen grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University.