ZAN | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation

A university student strips off her hijab in the streets of Tehran and films herself as part of a daring protest movement. A wealthy Iranian woman living in Atlanta maintains a secret life as a burlesque dancer. A teenager slips out of a hotel room at night to skinny dip in the toxic Caspian Sea. An Iranian lesbian agonizes over her coming out and her father’s subsequent attempts to re-educate her. These are some of the many windows ZAN opens into the complex lives of Iranian women today–those who continue to suffer oppression under the Islamic Republic, those who are crafting new identities in America, and those who hover somewhere in between.

Against the backdrops of the Islamic Republic and the American empire, these women grapple with the rigid standards foisted upon them and struggle to forge meaningful relationships with people who misunderstand and otherize them. Winner of the 2022 Dzanc Short Collection Prize, ZAN explores feelings familiar to anyone who has ever felt marginalized or who has sought a home in a world where cultures collide and conflict.

Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside author Arash Azizi to share more about the experiences that inspired this unflinching, lyrical short story collection. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Ehtesham-Zadeh will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of ZAN will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed. 

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Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh was born in Washington, D.C. to an Iranian father and an American mother. She moved to Iran at age 5 and grew up in Tehran under the Shah. She returned to the U.S. to attend Stanford University, and when the Islamic Revolution started brewing shortly after she graduated, she moved back to Iran and plopped herself down in it. She later received an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University. A lifelong English teacher, she has taught in schools and universities on three continents, but her permanent home is a 6-acre farm in Woodstock, GA. Her fiction has been published in numerous publications, including The Georgia Review, Gertrude Press, and Fiction International, and she received an honorable mention for The Best American Short Stories 2018.

Arash Azizi is a contributing writer at the Atlantic and his work on politics, history and cinema has also appeared in numerous other outlets including New York Times, New York Review of Books, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Newsweek and the BBC. He is the author of The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US and Iran’s Global Ambitions (2020) and What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom (2024).

Host or Publisher Busboys and Poets