Sholeh Wolpe

Sholeh Wolpé is a poet, literary translator and writer. She was born in Iran and spent most of her teen years in Trinidad and the UK before settling in the United States. Sholeh’s most recent awards include the 2013 Midwest Book Award and 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation prize. About Sholeh, the Poetry Foundation writes: "Wolpé’s concise, unflinching, and often wry free verse explores violence, culture, and gender. So many of Wolpé's poems deal with the violent situation in the Middle East, yet she is ready to both bravely and playfully refuse to let death be too proud." She is the author of several collections of poetry, including Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths, The Scar Saloon and Rooftops of Tehran; two collections of translations, Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad, and a special edition of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself into Persian, co-translated with Mohsen Emadi and commissioned by the University of Iowa’s International Program. She is the editor of numerous anthologies, including Breaking the Jaws of Silence—Sixty American Poets Speak to the World, featuring the most respected voices in American poetry, and The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and its Exiles. She is a regional editor and a translator for the Iran section of Tablet and Pen—Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, and her Iran Edition of the Atlanta Review became the journal’s best selling issue. Sholeh is a poet who straddles two cultures and languages. She is committed to translating and editing poetry and other literature from Iran, because in her view, "people should dialogue through poetry and not their politicians." Sholeh's work has been translated into several languages and included in numerous poetry and fiction anthologies, such as Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia; Beyond; Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: An Anthology of Asian American Female Poets; PowWow--Charting the Faultlines in the American Experience—Fiction from Then to Now; and Termors—New Fiction by Iranian American Writers. She has taught poetry and literary translation at Stonecoast's MFA program and has participated in numerous festivals including Dodge Poetry Festival, and sponsored international programs such as Same Gate in Turkey, interacting and writing with poets from Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, France, Iran and the U.S.. She lives (mostly) in Los Angeles.