Lauded Poet, Humanitarian to Lecture at Elizabethtown College

Roya Hakakian is the author of “Journey from the Land of No: A Memoir of a Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran,” which is her award-winning memoir about life as a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran. The book was a Barnes & Noble’s Pick of the Week, Ms. Magazine Must Read of the Summer, Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year, Elle Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2004, and was named Best Memoir by the Connecticut Center for the Book in 2005. Hakakian also is a recipient of the 2008 Guggenheim fellowship in nonfiction.

In addition, she has penned two collections of poetry in Persian, the first of which, “For the Sake of Water,” was nominated as poetry book of the year by Iran News in 1993. Hakakian was listed among the leading new voices in Persian poetry in the “Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World.” Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies around the world, including “La Regle Du Jeu,” “Strange Times My Dear: The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature,” and the forthcoming “W.W. Norton’s Contemporary Voices of the Eastern World: An Anthology of Poems.” She contributes to the Persian Literary Review and served as the poetry editor of Par Magazine for six years.

Hakakian has collaborated on more than a dozen hours of programming for leading journalism units on network television, including 60 Minutes and on A&E’s “Travels With Harry,” and ABC Documentary Specials with the late Peter Jennings, Discovery and The Learning Channel. Commissioned by UNICEF, Hakakian’s most recent film—“Armed and Innocent,” which is on the subject of the involvement of underage children in wars around the world—was a nominee for best short documentary at several festivals around the world.

Hakakian is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and serves on the board of Refugees International. She was a fellow at Yale University’s Whitney Humanities Center.

Born and raised in a Jewish family in Tehran, Hakakian came to the United States in May 1985 on political asylum. She lives in Connecticut.

Media Interview Opportunity

Interviews must be scheduled before Monday, April 19, at 5 p.m. by contacting Lori Burke.

Ms. Hakakian also will offer a public lecture on Tuesday, April 27, from 11 a.m. until noon. The lecture will be presented in Leffler Chapel and Performance Center.