A Tale of Love and Pr*son

The Baha’i community shares many similarities with the Jewish community, including ongoing struggles with persecution and deep commitment to tikkun olam (world healing). In this spirit of kinship, please join us for a Baha’i poetry reading by acclaimed Maine poet Sandra Lynn Hutchison , a personal account of Baha’i persecution in Revolutionary Iran by award-winning Maine human rights advocate and community organizer Parivash Rohani, and a discussion tying together the Baha’i and Jewish experiences facilitated by celebrated historian and poet Anna Wrobel. Light refreshments will be served.

Sandra Lynn Hutchison is the author of a book of poetry, The Art of Nesting (George Ronald), a memoir, Chinese Brushstrokes: Stories of China (Turnstone Press), and numerous essays and articles. Her stories have appeared in anthologies such as Chinese Ink, Western Pen (Oxford University Press) and Where Art and Faith Converge (George Ronald). Her translation of Mahvash Sabet’s A Tale of Love: More Pr*son Poems was published this past year by George Ronald. Hutchison holds a Ph.D. in English literature, with a specialization in modern poetry, from the University of Toronto. She has taught at universities in Canada, Hong Kong, China, India, and the United States, most recently at the University of Maine. Sandra has been the recipient of various academic awards and literary recognitions, including a Killam Fellowship, a Jane Kenyon Poetry Fellowship from Bennington College, and an Emily Dickinson Poetry Prize from Universities West Press. Her most recent chapbook of poems, The Beautiful Foolishness of Things, was a finalist in the Poet’s Corner Chapbook Contest.

Parivash Rohani was born and raised in Iran. Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, she moved to India, where she lived for six years before emigrating to the United States with her husband and newborn daughter in 1985. Currently residing in Portland, she worked as an ICU registered nurse and is a dedicated human rights advocate and community organizer. Parivash has been actively involved in various humanitarian, environmental, and interfaith projects. Her participation in the international campaigns “Education Is Not A Crime” and #OurStoryIsOne stems from her belief that grassroots efforts drive change and that justice requires universal engagement. She also volunteers with the League of Women Voters, Free Clinic, Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition (MIRC), and Portland Park Conservancy, and serves on the board of Greater Portland Family Promise. Parivash received the Trailblazer Award in 2017 for her social justice work and was honored as an International Woman Around the World in 2024.

About the Poet:

Baha’i poet and educator, Mahvash Sabet, author of the collection Pr*son Poems, has
been jailed multiple times due to activism for Baha’i rights in Islamic Revolutionary Iran.
Sabet suffered imprisonment from 2010 to 2017 and was reincarcerated in 2022 with other
Baha’i women activists who’ve endured physical torture and long isolations after trials of
dubious legitimacy. Sabet received many awards including the “Courageous Writer” award
from International PEN in 2017. Many non-Baha’i Iranians, struggling for their own freedoms,
have come to support Baha’i equality in a common cause for greater democracy in Iran.
Many Iranian and Bahai activists support a peace with Israel that may enlighten the region.

About the Facilitator:

Anna Wrobel Anna Wrobel is an American historian, teacher, poet, Holocaust Studies educator and daughter of Polish Jewish refugees, a rescue partisan mother and Soviet soldier father. Her poetry and essays appear in Cafe Review, Lilith, Off the Coast and Jewish Currents. Anna has two poetry collections, Marengo Street (2012) and The Arrangement of Things (2018). Her work appeared in University of Maine’s Holocaust Human Rights Center’s art and poetry exhibit,Dilemma of Memory, and she’s presented for the Puffin Foundation on Jewish resistance. Anna is consultant to the Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation (JPEF) and an Advanced Studies Lerner Fellow of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR). Anna’s poetry and history teaching have been featured at the Maine Jewish Museum, Colby College, Thomas College, UMaine-Augusta, Jewish Community Alliance, USM’s OLLI classes and OLLI Sage Lecture series. Poems from her manuscript Sparrow Feathers: Second Generation/First Person are used by teachers in several U.S. states, Poland, Germany and Israel-Palestine. Anna co-hosted the long-running poetry series, Lowry’s Lodge, with musician/writer Jim Donnelly. Life experiences include theater; artisanal craft; Galilee kibbutz farming (daughter Corinna Shulamit born); Maine mountain homesteading (son Barak Azriel born); construction site foreman; refugee advocate; long-time president of a local teachers’ union; single mom.

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