Offsite: Kaveh Akbar: Martyr! w/ Arian Moayed

Event guidelines:

• All attendees are strongly encouraged to wear a face mask at all times.
• Tickets are limited to restrict capacity.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here: https://youtube.com/live/QzmPUPPH7Jg
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.
“Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Ever.” —Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of There There
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.

Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine. He lives in Iowa City.

Arian Moayed is an Iranian-born, Emmy and Tony nominated actor, and co-Founder of Waterwell, an award-winning community organizing art and education company. As a writer/director, Arian created the Emmy-nominated The Accidental Wolf and The Courtroom. His current projects include 28 Mordad, The Great Fire of ‘33, Grandmaster, a film adaptation of The Man in Red, and an autobiography about his family’s escape from Iran. Notable acting credits: A Doll’s House (Amy Herzog), The Humans (Drama Desk Award), Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (Tony nomination), Guards at the Taj (Obie Award), Succession (Emmy nomination), Love Life (NAACP nomination), Spiderman: No Way Home (Marvel), Inventing Anna (Netflix), Ms. Marvel, You Hurt My Feelings (A24), House of Spoils.

Host or Publisher Books Are Magic