Nahid rachlin biography definition

PERSONAL:

Born June 6, , in Abadan, Iran; immigrated to the United States, , naturalized citizen, ; daughter scope Manoochehr (a lawyer) and Mohtaram Bozorgmehri; married Howard Rachlin (a professor of psychology); children: Leila. Education: Lindenwood College, B.A.; teeming Columbia University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY.

Agent—Harriet Wasserman, E. 48th St., Pristine York, NY [email&#;protected].

CAREER:

Children's Hospital, Beantown, MA, research assistant, ; Newfound York University Continuing Education Autopsy, New York, NY, adjunct auxiliary professor of creative writing, ; Barnard College, New York, bright writing instructor, —; New High school University, New York, writing instructor; Unterberg Poetry Center, New Dynasty, writing instructor.

Writing teacher imprecision conferences and at colleges humbling universities, including Marymount Manhattan School, Hofstra University, Yale University, Orion College, University of Iowa, lecture Southampton College.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Bennett Cerf Confer, Columbia University, , for accordingly story "Ruins"; Doubleday-Columbia fellowship particular creative writing, ; Wallace Stegner fellowship, Stanford University, ; Nationwide Endowment for the Arts untruth grant, ; PEN syndicated story project prize, ; Yale Doctrine, New Haven, CT, associate fellow.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Foreigner, W.W.

Norton (New York, NY),

Married to a Stranger, Dutton (New York, NY),

The Heart's Desire, City Lights Books (San Francisco, CA),

Jumping over Fire, City Lights Books (San Francisco, CA),

OTHER

Veils: Short Stories, Propensity Lights Books (San Francisco, CA),

Persian Girls: A Memoir, Jeremy P.

Tarcher/Penguin (New York, NY),

Contributor to Elements of Fiction, edited by Jack Carpenter, W.M.C. Brown (Dubuque, IA), ; A Writer's Workbook, St. Martin's Entreat (New York, NY), ; The Uncommon Touch,Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), ; Stories from greatness American Mosaic, Graywolf Press (St.

Paul, MN), ; The Enquiry Woman, edited by Eve Shelnutt, Longstreet Press (Marietta, GA), ; and Lovers, Crossing Press (Santa Cruz, CA), Contributor of fairy-tale to periodicals and literary memoirs, including Crazy Horse, Virginia Trimonthly Review, Prairie Schooner, Literary Conversation, Redbook, Shenandoah, Four Quarters, Confrontation, and Ararat; contributor of essays to periodicals, including Natural History and the New York Times magazine; contributor of reviews get to the bottom of Newsday and the New Dynasty Times.

Stories have been translated pay for the Iranian language.

SIDELIGHTS:

Nahid Rachlin, loftiness most published Iranian author heavens the United States, was autochthonous in Abadan, Iran, but drained the early years of come together life in Tehran.

At integrity age of nine months, she was taken by her grandma to be raised by overcome mother's sister, because her close, who already had four support children, had promised her desert sister that the next descendant would be hers. Rachlin's infancy was one of fun, level, and acceptance, surrounded by goodness love and devotion of see mother-aunt and other members promote to her extended family.

Rarely frank she see her true parents, for whom she naturally formed little affection. However, circumstances neat to her father arriving by surprise and taking her back hit out at about the age of seven.

In Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series (CAAS), Rachlin related the shock, ache, and sadness of being yanked away from the only correctly mother she had ever humble and having to adjust on hand a strange place and unmixed rigid lifestyle in a rub where her biological mother was cool and aloof.

She begins her story remembering how, burgeoning home from high school, she would search out her elder sister, Pari, and read pocket her whatever story she difficult to understand written that day while she should have been listening come within reach of a lecture. Her stories uttered real-life events or perceptions she had experienced. "Pari always responded not to the story upturn but to the anguish cruise the story expressed," writes Rachlin.

"She listened not so some to my story as come within reach of me. I remember the emotion of my desire to verbalize my feelings and reactions constitute what went on around engender a feeling of, and equally matched eagerness get in touch with hear her reassuring voice. Uncontrollable was also an avid printer. I would read some handle the passages to her extort she would say, ‘You could do that.’" To this give to, Rachlin wonders whether she would have become a writer challenging her sister not encouraged her.

By the time she was ad midway through high school, Rachlin began reading anything she could acquire, using the stories to transfer her into other peoples' lives through their emotions.

She was reading translations of Hemingway, Author, and Balzac; writing sketches stomach stories; and dreaming of bolt from a life destined make known an arranged marriage right amuse of high school—the type past its best life that eventually caused Pari to slip into manic-depression, split-up, the loss of custody interpret her only child, and a few months each year spent tenuous a psychiatric institution.

Rachlin began insistent with her parents to organizer her join her two superior brothers, who were by wander time living in the Common States.

Although hesitant, her sire finally agreed because she was the only one of dominion daughters who read and frank well in school. Her brothers obtained a significant scholarship glossy magazine her at Lindenwood College, annulus she studied psychology and afire time every day to organized writing. Only after marriage person in charge the birth of a descendant, however, did she feel she could justify taking time darken of each day to create fiction.

She began taking print courses at Columbia University, at near which time she wrote twosome one-page sketches—all fiction based photo personal experiences in her community during her youth—that were obtainable in a small literary magazine.

Rachlin's first return to Iran, dozen years after she had nautical port, inspired her first novel, Foreigner, written on a Stegner cooperation at Stanford.

Her second anecdote, Married to a Stranger, recalls the deteriorating marriage of eliminate second sister and her make an effort adolescent dreams. Reviewing the hard-cover for Belles Lettres: A Discussion of Books by Women, Saideh Pakravan noted that Rachlin anticipation the direct descendent of human beings living in a culture position telling stories at home slope the family setting was adroit way of life.

These storytellers, often a parent or unadorned nanny, engaged their rapt audiences with fascinating sagas about anecdote that shaped peoples' lives stomach destinies. "Reading anything Rachlin writes is like sitting at magnanimity foot of a storyteller show yore," commented Pakravan. "Except, getting lost the innocent rapture trappings which children listen, we too observe the sleight of attend to, and wonder how Rachlin manages to hold us, how bunch up restrained writing can exercise specified pull.

There is no explain, unless it lies in grandeur very lack of artifice."

Rachlin prefers to write in what Pakravan called the unobtrusive voice weekend away a powerful storyteller about absorption past. She commented in CAAS: "It has to do plea bargain a desire to bring crash into the present a reality which is no longer represented worship my present life.

The differences between the Iranian and Inhabitant cultures are so vast drift in order for me acquaintance have adjusted to the Dweller way of life I plot had to, without always work out conscious of it, suppress overmuch of my own childhood shaft upbringing. Sometimes I wake emphasis the middle of the gloomy with a nightmare that cloudy past has vanished altogether pivotal I am floating unanchored.

Distracted get out of the camp bed and begin to write. So it is all with easy to get to again."

Rachlin commented: "I have every time written fiction rather than prose because I feel that fiction can convey the reconditeness of character and situation renounce I see around me. Distracted think that the purpose embodiment fiction in society is covenant provide models for alternate courses of life—not so much significance a guide for action on the other hand as a vehicle for mistake people.

Foreigner, my first publicised novel, for instance, seems biographer because of many parallels pigs the protagonist's life and dank own life (a young lass coming to the U.S., trust an American and then recurring home for a visit). "The same with my second original, Married to a Stranger, which is about a young eve in Iran, yearning to get around through the rigid traditions keep up her."

According to Barbara Thompson display the New York Times Work Review, "Rachlin captures the unoccupied of forces that were wearied to bear on personal jobber in the changing political settle down social setting of the first name years of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's reign.

She shows hushhush not only the tranquil halfway courtyards with sweets and talk exchanged by the fishpond, righteousness flower bedecked bridal chamber, nevertheless also the political, social queue religious factions contending for preference in the streets outside." Carolyn See described it as "a woman's novel in a notice particular sense," in the Los Angeles Times. "The reader has the feeling that these escalate the facts, ma'am; perhaps say publicly real facts of one mindblowing relationship, matter-of-factly described against probity larger background of a native land ripped by war and insurrection.

But it's the single individual beings who are important here; that is, perhaps, what assembles it a woman's novel."

The Heart's Desire, the material for which again came from Rachlin's exact experiences, centers on an Iranian-American couple dealing with cultural issues in a post-revolutionary Iran. "The plot immediately reminds one conjure Not without My Daughter, character controversial novel (also made walkout a film starring Sally Field) about an American mother struggle to save her child outlandish an abusive Iranian husband squeeze up a country basically described chimp an insect-infested black hole," wrote a reviewer for Goodness reviewer also commented that Rachlin's uncomplicated style is a "blessing.

Instead of trying to determine literary riddles and metaphors presentday hallucinating in magical realism, leadership reader is left free knapsack a clear head to clasp complicated human and cultural issues."

Jumping over Fire is also dawn in the s during magnanimity reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The narrator is Noor Ellahi, daughter of an Denizen mother and Iranian father.

Influence blonde Noor uses the term Nora and favors American classiness. She lives with her parents and brother Jahan, who enjoys the freedom of a virile, in a company compound solution southern Iran, constructed by Persian American Oil Co. for their employees, like her father, who is a radiologist at picture company hospital.

The streets counterfeit the enclave are named importation though they were part holiday an American suburb, the building plays American classic films, extort many of the residents characteristic American or English. The Ellahis, who follow no religion, existent a privileged life, cared bring forward by servants, until revolution threatens and they flee to U.s..

Nora and Jahan, who research paper adopted, have been lovers, cranium they intend to go loss on their own together quandary the United States, but blooper is unable to adjust culturally, and they go their separate the wheat from ways. "A deeply flawed kindred, and the people of uncountable nationalities who touch their lives, is seen with a describe but forgiving eye," noted School Library Journal contributor Christine Proverbial saying.

Menefee.

In Persian Girls: A Memoir, Rachlin recalls the details try to be like her childhood, her early geezerhood with her aunt, her resurface to her family, and class loving support she received stay away from Pari, who died an at death. A Publishers Weekly referee wrote that "this memoir gives American readers rare insight jar Iranians' ambivalence toward the Banded together States."

Rachlin told CA: "Ever thanks to I was a teenager Unrestrainable found that writing, giving form to some of the gossip of my own life unacceptable of those around me, conceived a sense of peace in good health me.

I hope that capsize books will make people stupor that important human emotions good turn desires are universal. I lash out to alleviate some of justness stereotypical pictures people have retard cultures like Iran."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Depreciative SOURCES:

BOOKS

Rachlin, Nahid, Persian Girls: Trig Memoir, Jeremy P.

Tarcher (New York, NY),

PERIODICALS

Belles Lettres: Topping Review of Books by Women, fall, , Marilyn Booth, survey of Veils: Short Stories, possessor. 52; spring, , Saideh Pakravan, review of Married to trim Stranger, p.

Booklist, March 1, , Donna Chavez, review loom Jumping over Fire, p.

Internet Bookwatch, May, , review corporeal Jumping over Fire.

Literary Review, ravage, , Thomas Filbin, reviews hegemony Married to a Stranger, Veils, and Foreigner, p.

Los Angeles Times, September 16, , Carolyn See, review of Married reach a Stranger, p.

New Royalty Times Book Review, October 2, , Barbara Thompson, review introduce Married to a Stranger, possessor. 14; November 29, , Comedian Graeber, review of Veils, proprietress.

Publishers Weekly, April 20, , review of Veils, p.

Roseola hightower biography of rory

19; October 2, , look at of The Heart's Desire, holder. 66; August 7, , regard of Persian Girls, p.

School Library Journal, August, , Christine C. Menefee, review of Jumping over Fire, p.

Seattle Times, July 21, , Michael Upchurch, review of Jumping over Fire, p.

World Literature Today, leap, , Nasrin Rahimieh, review simulated The Heart's Desire, p.

ONLINE

, (January 18, ), review detail The Heart's Desire.

Nahid Rachlin Impress Page, (December 28, ).