Fatemeh Shams

Fatemeh Shams’s third collection, When They Broke Down the Door, translated by Dick Davis, received the 2016 Latifeh Yarshater Award. She won the Jaleh Esfahani poetry prize for the best young Iranian poet in 2012.

Two Persian Poems from Afghanistan

By Elyas Alavi

Spring 2020
Elyas Alavi

Illustration by Elyas Alavi from the series Waking Dreams Translator’s note: Few voices are more distinctive in the world of contemporary Afghan poetry than Elyas Alavi. The...
Finger in the Operating Room

By Fatemeh Shams

Autumn 2019
Fatemeh Shams

They had to remove it and off we went: A transparent image of bones chained together; Half face, three-quarters, full face of the fingers stretched out, fingers without recognizable lines, i...