Please join us for the third and final event of the Fall 2018 Hallie Ford Literary Series at Willamette University, a reading by Iranian-American memoirist and novelist Jasmin Darznik. The reading will take place on Thursday, November 8, at 7:30 p.m. in the Hatfield Room of Willamette’s library. The event is free and open to the public, and books will be for sale courtesy of the Willamette Store.
Jasmin is the author of a New York Times bestselling memoir, The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life, about her discovery of her mother’s teenage marriage and a half-sister left behind in Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This past spring, she published her first novel, Song of a Captive Bird, which fictionalizes the real-life story of Farough Farrokzhad, a trailblazing poet who is considered the godmother of Iranian feminism.
Born in Tehran before coming to America at five years old, Jasmin holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington College and a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University. Now a professor of English and creative writing at California College of the Arts, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
Here’s what the New York Times Book Review has to say about her novel: “Song of a Captive Bird is a complex and beautiful rendering of [a] vanished country and its scattered people; a reminder of the power and purpose of art; and an ode to female creativity under a patriarchy that repeatedly tries to snuff it out.”
Need more enticement? Read one of Jasmin’s essays here or listen to her discuss her memoir on NPR here.