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. .

Considered by Rumi to be "the master" of Sufi mystic poetry, Attar is best known for his epic poem The Conference of the Birds, a magnificent allegorical tale about the soul's search for meaning. The poem recounts the perilous journey of the world's birds to the faraway peaks of Mount Qaf, in search of the mysterious Simurgh, their king. Attar's beguiling anecdotes and humour intermingle the sublime with the mundane, the spiritual with the worldly, and the religious with the metaphysical. Reflecting the entire evolution of Sufi mystic tradition, Attar's poem models the soul's escape from the mind's rational embrace. Sholeh Wolpe re-creates the beauty of the original Persian in contemporary English verse and poetic prose, capturing for the first time the beauty and timeless wisdom of Attar's masterpiece for modern readers.

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 WolpE's mesmerizing memoir in verse unfolds. In this lyrical and candid work, her fifth collection of poems, WolpE 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.

Winner of the 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation Prize Sin includes the entirety of Farrokhzad's last book, numerous selections from her fourth and most enduring book, Reborn, and selections from her earlier work, and creates a collection that is true to the meaning, the intention, and the music of the original poems.

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.

"Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths," Sholeh Wolpe's third collection of poems, is a surreal journey of sorrows and sins, of love, ghosts, and Saudi princes, of banishment inside one's own skin. Wild in its leaps and images, these poems explore personal and psychological exile from a marriage, lovers, expectations, and finally, country."