About the Poets:

ARMEN DAVOUDIAN grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is the author of the poetry collection The Palace of Forty Pillars (Tin House) and the translator, from the Persian, of Hopscotch by Fatemeh Shams (Ugly Duckling Presse). His poems appear in the Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review. He is a PhD candidate in English and a Next Generation Scholar Fellow at Stanford University, where he is writing a dissertation titled “Metanoia: How Poets Change Their Minds.”

FATEMEH SHAMS is the author of two books of poetry in Persian and a critical monograph in English on poetry and politics, A Revolution in Rhyme (Oxford UP). When They Broke Down the Door (Mage, 2016), a collection of her poems translated by Dick Davis, won the 2016 Latifeh Yarshater Award from the Association for Iranian Studies. Her poetry has been featured in Poetry magazine, PBS NewsHour, World Literature Today, and the Penguin Book of Feminist Writing, among other venues. She is Associate Professor of Persian Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.