I would certainly consider her as well, especially as I'm hoping/planning to

be teaching the Graduate Issues Course as a creative nonfiction workshop.

It's been several years since that has occurred, and we have a cnf student

(and maybe two) in the grad program.





On 8/29/11 4:57 PM, "Schloss, David Mr." <[log in to unmask]> wrote:



> Dear Eric,

> 

> I would certainly want to seriously consider inviting her next academic year.

> She sounds fascinating, and the people who endorse her work are very

> impressive to me.

> 

> David

> 

> ________________________________________

> From: Miami University Creative Writing Faculty [[log in to unmask]]

> On Behalf Of Schloss, David Mr. [[log in to unmask]]

> Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 5:47 PM

> To: [log in to unmask]

> Subject: Re: INQUIRING about giving a talk/reading from my memoir, PERSIAN

> GIRLS-Nahid Rachlin

> 

> Thanks, Eric

> 

> ________________________________________

> From: Miami University Creative Writing Faculty [[log in to unmask]]

> On Behalf Of Goodman, Eric [[log in to unmask]]

> Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 4:26 PM

> To: [log in to unmask]

> Subject: FW: INQUIRING about giving a talk/reading from my memoir, PERSIAN

> GIRLS-Nahid Rachlin

> 

> Fyi

> 

> I've already written to say that I think we're pretty much full up for this

> year.......

> 

> 

>     Eric

> 

> 

> ------ Forwarded Message

> From: Nahid Rachlin <[log in to unmask]>

> Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:52:27 -0400

> To: "Goodman, Eric" <[log in to unmask]>

> Subject: INQUIRING about giving a talk/reading from my memoir, PERSIAN

> GIRLS-Nahid Rachlin

> 

> Dear Professor Goodman, I am writing to find out if you would be interested

> in inviting me to give a talk-reading from my memoir, PERSIAN GIRLS or from

> my fiction in your program when you have an opening. I attended Columbia

> University MFA program on a  Double-Columbia Fellowship and then went to

> Stanford University on a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. My publication include,

> several novels, among them, FOREIGNER (Norton), and a memoir, PERSIAN GIRLS

> (Penguin.) One of my short stories was produced by Symphony Space, as part

> of their "Selected Shorts," series, and was  aired on NPRs, "selected

> shorts" around the country. I have also been granted a Pen Syndicated

> project award and a National Endowment for the Arts grant.  **There is a

> long interview with me in the May/summer 2008 issue of AWP Writers

> Chronicle. For more please click on my website: http://www.nahidrachlin.com

> (212) 9963478

> ***

> Excerpts from Reviews:

> 

> About PERSIAN GIRLS:

> National Public Radio: The World

> Christopher Merrill, the Director of Iowa International Writing Program: "If

> you want to know what it was like to grow up in Iran this is the book to

> read. The prospects of her becoming a writer were, at best, dim. But her

> portrait of the artist in an Islamic country on the verge of dramatic change

> is filled with light."

> 

> Publishers Weekly:

> "This lyrical and disturbing memoir by the author of four novels (Foreigner

> , etc.) tells the story of an Iranian girl growing up in a culture where,

> despite the Westernizing reforms of the Shah, women had little power or

> autonomy... Exuding the melancholy of an outsider, this memoir gives

> American readers rare insight into Iranians' ambivalence toward the United

> States, the desire for American freedom clashing with resentment of American

> hegemony."

> 

> Boston Globe:

> "Persian Girls, reads like a novel -- suspenseful, vivid, heartbreaking. In

> "Persian Girls, Rachlin chronicles her choices and those made by her

> sisters, her mother and her aunts, throwing the door to her family's home

> wide open. Readers who follow her through will be wiser, and moved."

> 

> The Charlotte Observer:

> "Iran again looms large on the world stage. Rhetoric conjures fear of

> radical Islam and flashbacks to the Ayatollah Khomeini-- images that obscure

> Iran's rich cultural history as Persia and ignore ordinary people torn

> between old and new, secular and sacred. In her bittersweet memoir, Persian

> Girls, Iranian American novelist Nahid Rachlin fills in the blanks."

> 

> About JUMPING OVER FIRE:

> 

> "If, as Aristotle reminds us, we are our desire, then who are we if the

> object of our desire is forbidden? What becomes of us if we are born in one

> world yet long  for another? These are just two of the complex and difficult

> questions Nahid Rachlin explores and ultimately illuminates in this brave,

> engrossing, and timely novel. I recommend it highly!"

> --Andre (Dubus III),author of House of Sand and Fog, and In the Bedroom

> 

> ³This poignant, beautifully told story of an Iranian-American family is both

> a great read and a fine introduction to a land and a culture about which it

> is imperative we Americans inform ourselves as much and as quickly as

> possible.²

> ‹ Sigrid Nunez, author of The Last of Her Kind and For Rouenna.

> 

> About FOREIGNER:

> 

> New York Times Book Review:

> "... a rare intimate look at Iranians who are poorer and less educated... I

> have read (this book) four times by now, and each  time I have discovered

> new layers in it. The voice is cool and pure. Bleak is the right word, if

> you will understand that bleakness can have a startling beauty."

> -- Anne Tyler, NY Times Book Review

> 

> "... an accomplished Iranian novel... FOREIGNER avoids political comment.

> Its protest is more oblique, the political constriction drives the passion

> deeper, and the novel with all its air of innocence, is a novel of

> violation, helplessness and defeat."

> -- V.S.  Naipaul, from Among the Believers

> 

>    About MARRIED TO A STRANGER:

> 

> New York Times Book Review:

> "The ecstasies and disillusionments of first love are the stuff of great

> tragedies and cheap romances but Nahid Rachlin has done something else with

> this familiar theme, and something more, though her style is elegantly

> simple... Miss Rachlin shows us not only the tranquil inner courtyards with

> sweets and gossip exchanged by the fishpond, the flower bedecked bridal

> chamber, but also the political, social and religious factions contending

> for primacy in the streets outside... Minou is a dreamy literary girl...

> like other yearning heroines from Dorothea Brooke to Emma Bovary, she wants

> more than conventional marriage..."-- New York Times book Review

> 

> "MARRIED TO A STRANGER seems to me such a clear statement and all of one

> pieces-- a direct cry, as it were, from out of a particular feminine

> sensibility. Reading the book, one feels one knows what it is like to be a

> girl growing up to be a woman in urban, 'modern' Iran; and knows it not from

> the outside, as from a sociological survey, but from within a living

> experience... Nahid Rachlin has refined her prose... by giving it the

> clarity and spare sensuousness of Persian poetry or miniature painting."

> -- Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

> 

>    About VEILS:

> 

> "... The commonalities of life, wherever it's lived, shine through in these

> tales of family friendship, love, and war... They are stories of strength

> and endurance that continually remind us how fragile our outer shells can

> be, how deeply love can be felt, and how strong the influence of home is,

> wherever home may be."

> -- 500 Great Books by Women, A Reader's Guide, Penguin Books

> 

> About THE HEART'S DESIRE:

> 

> "What is remarkable about THE HEART'S DESIRE is its even-handedness and

> painful honesty. Rachlin's characters face each other across a gulf of

> irreconcilable differences, but she shows them to us with their complexity

> and dignity intact, their deepest needs as recognizable to our own. In the

> end, though, Iran is the major character in this novel. By the time we've

> finished confronting it from very diverse perspectives, each beautifully

> evoked, we have experienced the potent spell it casts over its people, and

> the weight of that spell fora Western woman."  -- Rosellen Brown

> 

> "Nahid Rachlin has written an intimate family study that is, simultaneously,

> an exploration of cultures, nations, worlds. Her willingness to be

> vulnerable to such powerful feeling, and her ability to pass it along to us,

> make THE HEART'S DESIRE a profoundly moving experience."

> -- Frederick Busch

> 

> -- Kirkus Reviews:

> "... offers an affecting portrait of the irreconcilable conflict between the

> familiar and the foreign... A perceptive account, in polished prose..."

> -- Kirkus Review

> 

> ------ End of Forwarded Message