Sholeh Wolpe – författare

Longlisted for the PEN Translation AwardBest Spiritual Books of 2025 - Spirituality and PracticeThe first comprehensive English collection from one of the world’s most influential mystics—Attar—the twelfth-century poet Rumi called his master.Twelfth-century Persian poet Attar (1145–1221) was revered by Rumi and though his work is beloved around the world, he is mostly unknown to English readers. Translated in simple, elegant language by award-winning poet Sholeh Wolpé—one among generations of poets influenced by Attar's poetry—The Invisible Sun is a beautiful treasury of Attar’s most prescient poetry, offering comfort and inspiration.Attar was one of the most important mystic Sufi poets in the East, comparable in stature and influence to John Milton in the West. In Western thought there is a sharp separation between day-to-day human experience and the transcendence of religion and spirituality. But Sufi philosophy teaches that while the soul awaits its release from the confines of the body, it can experience the other world through mystic union achieved by an inward journey to purify the self.The Invisible Sun widely introduces the work of Attar—the master Rumi called “the spirit” and himself “its shadow”—to English-speaking readers as never before. Profound yet exquisite in its simplicity, bringing comfort and wisdom, Attar’s poetry continues to resonate today:Everything, large and small, honors your existence,don’t look at yourself with contempt.There is nothing greater than you.

During the 1979 revolution, Iranians from all walks of life, whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, socialist, or atheist, fought side-by-side to end one tyrannical regime, only to find themselves in the clutches of another. When Khomeini came to power, freedom of the press was eliminated, religious tolerance disappeared, women’s rights narrowed to fit within a conservative interpretation of the Quran, and non-Islamic music and literature were banned. Poets, writers, and artists were driven deep underground and, in many cases, out of the country altogether. This moving anthology is a testament to both the centuries-old tradition of Persian poetry and the enduring will of the Iranian people to resist injustice. The poems selected for this collection represent the young, the old, and the ancient. They are written by poets who call or have called Iran home, many of whom have become part of a diverse and thriving diaspora.

Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” It is in this vein that Sholeh WolpÉ’s mesmerizing memoir in verse unfolds. In this lyrical and candid work, her fifth collection of poems, WolpÉ invokes the abacus as an instrument of remembering. Through different countries and cultures, she carries us bead by bead on a journey of loss and triumph, love and exile. In the end, the tally is insight, not numbers, and we arrive at a place where nothing is too small for gratitude.

Introduced by Farindokht Zahedi, Associate Professor, College of Fine Arts / Theater / Faculty of Performing Arts and Music, University of Tehran. Editors Aubrey Mellor and Cheryl Robson. A wide-ranging collection of plays from new and established voices from today's Iran and the global Iranian diaspora. Plays cover life in contemporary Iran, the hopes of women finding new ways to assert their individuality in a time of great of upheaval, the lives of those trapped in a migrant camp and the need to challenge stereotypical views. The plays shine a light on a rapidly changing Iran, one that is vastly different from the misconceptions outsiders have of it. Includes: A Moment of Silence by Mohammad Yaghoubi - (Iran) Home by Naghmeh Samini - (Iran) Shame by Sholeh Wolpe -(Iran-USA) Manus by Leila Hekmatnia (Iran), Keyvan Sarreshteh (Iran), Nazanin Sahamizadeh (Australia) Isfahan Blues Torange Yeghiazarian - (Iran-USA) Editors: Aubrey Mellor Aubrey is a leading Australian Theatre Director. Currently Senior Fellow at LASALLE, in Singapore, he was the first Australian to study Asian writing. Formerly Director of the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), he is well-known as an acting teacher to a generation of acclaimed Australian actors. He has directed for all major companies, commissioned and premiered plays by Australia's leading playwrights and is a leading proponent of new Australian writing. Aubrey founded several writing awards for playwrights and is an advisor to arts bodies including the Performing Arts Board of The Australia Council and The Australian National Playwright's Conference. Awards include the OAM in 1992, the Australian Writer's Guild's Dorothy Crawford Award for services to Playwriting and the International Theatre Institute's Uchimura Prize for best production, Tokyo International Festival. Cheryl Robson Cheryl has edited several collections of international drama. After studying drama at Bristol University, she worked for the BBC and as a film lecturer. She founded the Virginia Prize for Fiction in 2009 in the UK. She is an award-winning playwright who has received Arts Council UK commission and option awards and had several plays produced. She ran a theatre company for several years in London, developing and producing international plays by women. She has won numerous awards for her filmmaking and was recently named a finalist in the ITV National Diversity awards - Lifetime Achievement. .

“In Sholeh Wolpe’s Rooftops of Tehran , an unforgettable cast of characters emerges, from the morality policeman with the poison razor blade to the crow-girls flapping their black garments, from the woman with the bee-swarm tattoo emerging from her crotch to the author as a young girl on a Tehran rooftop with a God’s eye view ‘hovering above a city / where beatings, cheatings, prayers, songs, / and kindness are all one color’s shades.’ Here is a delicious book of poems, redolent of saffron and stained with pomegranate in its vision of Iran and of the immigrant life in California. Wolpe’s poems are at once humorous, sad, and sexy, which is to say that they are capriciously human, human even in that they dream of wings and are always threatening to take flight.”—Tony Barnstone, Award winning poet and translator, author of The Golem of Los Angeles