Maziar Maghsoodnia Memorial Fund 2023 Reading Featuring Solmaz Sharif

September 13, 2023

Maziar Maghsoodnia Poetry Fund 2023 Reading Featuring Solmaz Sharif

September 13, 2023

4 p.m.

David Brower Center, Tamalpais Room

Solmaz Sharif will give the 2023 Maziar Maghsoodnia Memorial Fund Reading. She will be in conversation with Lubna Safi, an advanced Ph.D. candidate at MELC and the author of Your Blue and the Quiet Lament: Poems. Reception to follow.

Born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, Solmaz Sharif is the author of Customs(Graywolf Press, 2022) and Look (Graywolf Press, 2016), a finalist for the National Book Award. She holds degrees from U.C. Berkeley, where she studied and taught with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, and New York University. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, the New York Times, and others. Her work has been recognized with a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lannan Foundation, and Stanford University. She is currently the Shirley Shenker Assistant Professor of English at U.C. Berkeley.

The Maziar Maghsoodnia Poetry Fund supports Persian literature, especially Persian poetry, in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. The Fund is named after Maziar “Mazi” Maghsoodnia, who was tragically killed in a car accident in March 2016. Maziar was a wonderful, gentle human being, a loving family man, and a great lover and admirer of Persian poetry. He also loved Berkeley, the city, the campus, the university, and the Persian program. In his memory, his family and friends put together this generous fund to promote Persian poetry at Berkeley. Recognizing the centrality of Persian poetry in the production and compostion of literary heritage of the Iranian world, the Maghsoodnia Memorial Fund supports seminars and colloquia on outstanding figures of classical poetry, as well as lectures and poetry readings by and about prominent contemporary Persian poets. This endowment will enhance the learning experience of Berkeley’s students of Iranian heritage and students of Persian language and literature and enable direct engagement with contemporary poets and literary scholars.

Sponsor(s): Maghsoodnia Poetry Fund, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Culture, Dean’s Office of the Division of Arts & Humanities, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Arts Research Center

Free and open to the public.

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