Fatemeh Shams

Born in Mashhad, Iran, Fatemeh Shams earned her doctoral degree from the University of Oxford. Her poetry collections include Hopscotch (2024), When They Broke Down the Door (2016), Writing in the Mist (2015), and 88 (2013). Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, London Poetry Magazine, and Penguin Book of Feminist Writing, among others. Her poetry has been translated into English, Kurdish, and German. 

Shams’s verse is marked by exilic contemplations on the psychogeography of cities, wars, the deteriorating natural world, violence, and their intersections with the human body. Her awards include the Latifeh Yarshater Award and the Jaleh Esfahani Poetry Prize for poets under 30 years of age and from Persian speaking countries and the diaspora. She teaches Persian literature and culture at the University of Pennsylvania.