Whenever I’ve wanted to be rational, whenever I’ve wanted to control myself, I have screwed up my life. My life doesn’t seem to tolerate rationality … because I’m not a thinker, I mean I don’t follow my brain, I follow my heart. But this very basic instinct has carried me forward and brought me to where you see me today. Choosing to become a writer or trying to be a writer in a day and age when misery, war, unemployment, hunger, and persecution was rampant, when all the prospect in front of you was a wasteland, that cannot be a rational choice. It means I chose displacement and hunger and homelessness, because there was no hope to publish, no writing competition to submit to or … oh … there was nothing, just nothing. I just wrote and read my work to whomever I could. I could have been hanged! Because I was so nosy and pried everywhere, because my family was involved, very involved … I might have starved because everyone was busy with their own miseries, and education and studying wasn’t worth a dime. But before settling on writing I had wandered a lot … I had hopped on every branch… poetry, theatre … In 1978, I had just returned from the U.S., and I was admitted to the psychology program at the University of Tehran. The revolution was in the air. Every time I took a bus to go from Tehran to Shiraz, or from Shiraz to Tehran, when they asked me what I did I’d say: “I’m a student”, and later “I’m a nurse” or “a factory worker” or … I had become weary, I didn’t know what I was; everyone thought I was lost, that I was set adrift and there was no coming back. Until I wrote the first paragraph of Kanizu, just the one paragraph. I was having lunch with my friend Shohreh Chelipa at her home. I read her the paragraph and she was stunned … she showed me her arms and said: “look Maryam, I have goosebumps!” and that’s when I knew this is where I belong, next to Kanizu. After I finished Kanizu, when someone asked me what I did I’d say, without a hesitation, that I was a writer … and they would stare at me … I had no published book and for many years after that –eight years in fact—Mahmoud Dowlatabadi would introduce me to others as “the writer with no book”. In 1980 I went to the Writer’s Council, and later in 1984 I got acquainted with Golshiri’s circle. Those were difficult years, people would even sell their engagement rings just to buy something to eat, and everywhere you could see people selling their houses and belongings for cheap, just to escape the country. But I was happy and busy with my writing and my stories. I had no place to stay when I wanted to edit and rewrite Kanizu. I remember that during the 23 times I wrote and rewrote Kanizu, I moved eleven times! There was not a single person who looked at me as though I was sane. Everyone, even my relatives looked at me with pity and remorse, but there was also respect; people felt sorry for a respectful and intelligent woman. And now, how sorry I feel for them all!

They ask me lots of questions, journalists, students, translators or readers of my books. As it’s not possible to answer all of them, so I’ll put some more common questions with their answers here for all to read. 

Q: You are known as a writer. But have you ever been interested in any other fields?

A: When I was a kid in the kindergarten, or later when I went to school, I loved dancing, singing and acting in plays. I was always an active member of all the artistic groups. In my primary school in my hometown, Bushehr, I used to perform one-act plays. In high school, I was the lead role for a play called “Mother”, which was written by the well-known Iranian writer and poet, Manoochehr Atashi. Then I became interested in poetry and started writing poems. It was at a time when the society had been shocked by the death of Forough Farrokhzad, the prominent poet. I feel I was too influenced by that emotional atmosphere, and that’s why I think those poems that I wrote were no good. There was an eminent poet in Bushehr, Mohammadreza Nemati, who listened to my poems painstakingly, but I always wondered why he never said anything. 

I should say I always loved theatre. When I went to Pahlavi University in Shiraz, I joined their theatre group, which was led by Shapour Jorkesh. The group performed several plays. We were barred from performing one of our plays, Abuzar Ghaffari, which was about a religious figure in early Islam. But we managed to stage Prometheus Bound. There was another play, Teacher, which was written by Shapour Jorkesh. I remember we invited Gholamhossein Saedi to Shiraz to read the script and give us his remarks. We staged the play, but then the students’ strike began. 

In Tehran, after the revolution, I worked with a group led by Roknaddin Khosravi. We staged Sizwe Banzi Is Dead. Then there was “Long Live the Councils”, which was a play based on the reports I had written about Amidi factory. The play was staged in Tehran and some other cities, directed by Mr Sadeghi. 

Q: Have you written children’s stories?

A: I’ve written many of them. My first contract was with Iran Cassette. They paid me 3000 tomans a month, or less, and I wrote children’s stories for them. They turned the stories into tapes and books. Some of these collections are: Children’s Games, Children’s Songs and Children’s Stories. I also worked with other publishing companies: Sahar and Amoo Zanjirbaf. For the latter, I wrote twleve children’s stories based on Saadi’s Fables. 

After publishing The Drowned, I met Sirous Tahbaz, whom I gave three of my stories. One of them was called Golpar, the Moon and the Rainbow.  My last children’s works were published by Markaz Publications. Some of them were: The Most Beautiful Star in the World, The Snowflake (which has nothing to do with the famous Snowflake), The Rolling Pumpkin, which was an old story, but I gave it a new twist. Now only Markaz Publications has my books. Some of my books were at Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. Their building caught fire, and I believe my books burnt with it. 

Q: Your first book for adults was Kanizoo.

A: Yes. But in 1980, when I was living in Tehran University’s dormitory, as I was studying my master’s in psychology, I wrote The Sparrow and Mr President. I remember I wrote it within two days. It was amid the Iranian presidential elections. I took the story to Negah Publications because I wanted to have it read by Mr Darvishian. He read my story, but he’d thought it was written by a little girl of 10 or 12. It was because the tone of the story was childlike, for it was telling the story from the viewpoint of a child. This story stands on the border between children’s story and adult fiction. Negah Publications published it. Then shortly after, all the copies were confiscated and destroyed. Even I don’t have a copy myself. 

Q: How did you publish Kanizoo?

A: It was hard, extremely hard. It took me almost eight years. First it was because of the war (Iran & Iraq). Books and reading were considered a luxury and were seriously frowned upon.  Any cultural activities could also be considered an act of counterrevolution, it was dangerous. We had a Minister of Culture, Mirsalim, who was suffocating writers and artists. Only those who had proved their unconditional allegiance to the regime were allowed to publish their work. I took my book from this publication to another. No one wanted to publish it. Their excuse was that it was bad literature and unprintable. One of them was NIL Publications. Some of the them were scared. My favourite mentor, Mahmood Dolatabadi, used to introduce me to others as an unpublished writer! It went on like that until the war was over. We’d been defeated. However, the regime’s propaganda machine was trying to sell it as a victory. There was a newspaper which opened after the war where we could publish our stories. In the end, it was Niloofar Publications which published Kanizoo. 

Q: You have worked with many publishers. Why is that?

A: I had several reasons. For example, when I was in Shiraz, Shiva Publications, owned by Mr Emami, signed with me to publish The Heart of Steel.  After I moved to Tehran, Ebrahim Nabavi asked me to give him another book I’d written, Southern Myths and Legends. He gave it to Najva Publications, and they published it. Both these publications had to close down shortly after. My other book, The Drowned, was presented to another publication, Khaneye Aftab. Long after that, Niloofar Publications, which had published Kanizoo, republished my The Heart of Steel. I had another contract with Markaz Publications to print Satan’s Stones and The Gypsy by the Fire. Then after that, there was Ghesseh Publications, which purchased the right of three of my books and published them again: The Drowned, The Heart of Steel and Siria Siria. The same publications also published The Woman in Frankfurt’s Airport and Nazli. 

Q: How do the stories come to you?

A: Sometimes in a hazy and ambiguous form. An image, a memory, even the movement of a hand, whatever that inspires my imagination. Siria Siria sprang to my mind when I saw a women’s traditional dress, entangled in some bush outside Akhand village. Storms, the sea and its waves always bring me stories. 

Q: How come you decided to become a writer?

A: I had no choice. Incidentally, I tried not to become a writer. I first went after poetry, theatre and cinema.  But writing was my destiny. For me, everything comes down to Jafreh (my village) and my family. The first ten years of my life, I lived in a family whose each member was a great storyteller. My grandfather, grandmother, father, uncle, aunts and all the women of Jafreh. The political and cultural armosphere in my house was also very influential. We read the famous periodicals of the time, such as Dakho, Nasim-e-Shomal, Tofigh. We were always reading Khayyam and Ferdowsi. When my father went away to other villages and towns, his souvenir for us was always poems. There were stories everywhere. The accommodating atmosphere in our home indulged our imagination. My family never tried to clip my wings. I was always experiencing something which was good for any writer. 

It was finally in April 1981 when I sat down to write my first story, Kanizoo. First, I wrote only one paragraph. I first read it to my poet friend, Shohreh Chalipa. Once I was at hers at lunch time. I took out my notebook and read her that one paragraph. She stopped eating…I still remember her amazed look and her wet eyes. 

Q: Do you think there is a difference between the works of male and female writers?

A: There’s always difference. You can even find this difference between the works of two female writers. Every writer has their own imagination and experience which have roots in a particular historical era. Every writer has a unique outlook to the world. So, it’s just natural that the works be different. This diversity is the beauty of literature. 

Q: What is your favourite theme?

A: Everything about man and their struggles, their falling in love, their endeavour for survival and their fight against tyranny, the tyranny of the society, the government, the family and the nature. 

Q: In your stories, especially The Drowned, you have made use of local myths and legend. Some say this has been under the influence of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What do you think?

A: Image a little girl, who spent her first ten years of life in a village by the ocean. She’s been raised among seamen, sailors, fishermen, she’s witnessed first-hand their struggle with the cruelty of nature. Well, this little girl when grows up will write these stories. And besides, like all the other women of Jafreh, I like creating epic stories and legends. I think, when this little girl grows up into an adult and goes to university, where her friend Shapour Jorkesh gives her the One Hundred Years of Solitude, would think she too could write about her childhood as it was without shame and fear of judgement. 

Q: How do you sustain your energy as a writer?

A: Writing for me is survival. After the 1979 revolution and during a few years after that, my family was robbed of everything by the new regime. Some of us were murdered. There were times when we all were fugitives and couldn’t go back home except for my mother and father. 

It was around the early 80s, the mass execution of political dissidents. I was arrested in Shiraz. I was detained for a short while, but during the first night, I was certain that they’d kill me, and no one would find out what had happened to me. I promised myself to take writing more seriously if I should ever get get out. I wanted to be seen and known, so nobody could make me disappear whithout a trace. Those were horrific times. One of my relatives had been tortured until he went blind. People would find the bodies of young dissidents with their testicles cut out. When I don’t write, I feel suffocated. Actually, I realised this after I immigrated to the US, that writing for me is living itself. Writing soothes me. 

Q: Where do you find your stories? Or do they find you?

A: When I was single and alone, I would travel to far-flung regions and talk to the locals. I would write and write and read. When my son was born, I entered the amazing realm of motherhood. It’s a world of anxiety and love. That was a new experience for me as a person. Fascinated by this new experience, I stopped travelling for a while. As luck would have it, my first trip after this period, was that to Berlin. I was attending a conference there. The very same conference whose news stormed the papers and stirred a lot of contraversy. Wherever I travelled in Iran, I would take my son along with me. I had a three-day trip to Sabzevar, where I wrote a screenplay for a movie which was to be directed by Mr Miri. It was my first trip without my son. I was miserable, could never be away from my son. Reading, writing, listening to others’ stories always inspire me. 

Q: At what times do you generally write?

A: I force myself to have a timetable. However, my son still depeneds on me and I have to adapt myself accordingly. I normally write in the mornings, when my son is at school and I have all the place to myself. But in the summers, I start writing after 9 pm. But my mind is always occupied by stories or the articles that I’ve read somewhere or the things I’m about to write that night. 

Q: How many hours do you work a day?

A: Between three to ten hours. And when I say work, it’s not only writing, but also reading and note-taking. Or sometimes I rewrite my older stories. 

Q: How do you take notes?

A: When I first started writing, I would carry a notebook around with me. I would scribble down interesting ideas and beautiful phrases that came to my mind or I’d heard somewhere. I remember when I was arrested, I had one of those notebooks with me and I had some trouble for a word they had found in it. It was Gasho, which is a word in the local dialect of Buchehr, which means stupid. They’d thought it was some coded message or something. After the advent of personal computers, my notebooks disappeared. But recently, I’ve had these three little notebooks I write in. I put them above my head when I sleep, and I put them in my bag when I get up. 

Q: How has your immigration to the US influenced your life as a writer?

A: Migration is not easy. But here, no one bothers me for my writing. I have a vast playground. You could write in Persian and publish whatever you want. You could also write in English if you can. Incidentally, I think in Iran, we had been sent into exile of our homes. Moving to another country was not easy, but it was worth all the difficulty. It was a new beginning for me. I realized what it meant to be a writer. I got to know myself better. 

Q: Do you write in English or in Persian?

A: both. It hasn’t been easy. I had been brainwashed like many others at the time that English was the language of The Imperialism and we used to look at this language with contempt. The more ignorant you are, the more contemtuous you become!

Q: What do you write in English?

A: About my experiences here, and the stories I have had. I really hope that I can keep doing this because it’s not easy. Sometimes I feel miserable. 

Q: When you start a story, do you always know how it ends?

A: It depends on the story. In Gypsy by the Fire, I knew where I was going. But The Drowned dragged me around a lot. Sometimes stories decide their own fate. The characters come alive and go rogue. Sometimes I learn a lot from my own characters. 

Q: How do your characters form?

A: I can’t exactly say how it happens. Sometimes they come into existence because the story needs them. Sometimes they are all ready in the beginning. Their names and their faces are always important to me. Especially for the ones that happen in the South. Many of the characters from The Drowned are real. Mahjamal’s beauty is inspired by one of my aunts. Bahador is my cousin, and Kanizoo was herself. 

When I was in eleven’s grade, my teacher, Ms Saber, gave me The Grapes of Wrath. I remember I was always looking for a character like Tom around me. While I was reading And Quiet Flows the Don, I remember I felt so unsettled. I looked for the characters in my family and among my relatives. I had a stepbrother, whom my mother had adopted from an orphanage, his name was Mahsin, we used to call him Kaka. I liked him very much. Not just because he was my brother, because he reminded me of Gregor Melekhov!

Q: Do you type into a computer or write by hand?

A: Nazli was my last handwritten first draft. After that, I’ve always used a computer. 

Q: Who has influenced you most as a writer?

A: All the writers before me whom I have read. And even the writers I read these days. But Saedi was an important one. I read his sceneplays when I was a student. His stories have this ethereal quality that I genuinely enjoy. There was also Sooveshoon, which I read as a student. Then there was Mahmoud Dolatabadi, whose characters were so powerful and familiar. Golshiri was another influence on me. He was a pioneer of using modern forms in Persian storytelling. 

In foreign writers, I’ve been fascinated by Russian writers since my youth. I read a Gorky when I was a kid in my village. I wasn’t even ten. I don’t remember the title. In my family, because of the political tendencies and ideological views, everyone liked Gorky. I read Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Goncharov and Tolstoy later when I went to university. My first encounter with American literature was Mickey Spillane, and his famous detective, Mike Hammer. I remember it was a summer during which I read 23 of his books. It was a contest with a friend. I couldn’t put the book down. Then came Jack London with The Call of the Wild. And later John Steinbeck. Now of course I know much more about American literature. I’m particularly interested in American and South American Gothic fiction.

I have read tons of sceneplays, and I have no idea how they might have influenced my works. When I was in university, I read Shakespeare and also ancient Greek tragedies. I even used to read the Bible, especially the Song of Solomon. Oedipus and Waiting for Godot have also influenced me a lot. 

Q: You have also written screenplays and some of them were made into movies.

A: Yes. When I worked with Iran Cassette, our building was right across from a production company, Hedayat Film. One day I told them I had some stories and then I started to turn them into screenplays. I wrote ten plots for them. The most famous one was called Water. I remember there was a fierce competition on who to make the film. I wanted Hossein Zandbaf to make it, but they did whatever they could to take it from him and they did. I went on writing more screenplays and I had some of them approved, until an idiot sold me out. After than incident, I worked underground and on others’ scripts. Then it got a bit better. I worked with Hatamikia to write the synopsis of The Glass Agency.  Then I pulled back again, as someone had pressed charges against me on another work of mine, Satan’s Stones. I thought they’d destroy my life again…After than, I worked with Tahmineh Milani to write The Fifth Reaction. I heard it won some prize in Egypt. I don’t know if it was true or not. 

Q: Why did stop working in cinema?

A: I didn’t. They didn’t want me anymore. You needed official approval for every piece that you wrote, then some idiot here and there would tell you how to make it “approvable”. I couldn’t stand that. I wanted to be master of my own life. Albeit I met lots of good people in cinema, like Rakhshan Bani-Etemad. It was the beginning of her career when we worked together. Then I told her that we couldn’t work with one another because we were different people. It’s like as if I’m standing by the road with a bouquet in my hand, while you’re standing with a machete. 

Q: Some say that screenwriting damages the work of a writer. Do you agree?

A: On the contrary, it helped me write novels. It was like training for creating characters. 

Q: Have you ever lied?!

A: Big lies, yes, two or three. I’ll tell you one of them. Mohsen Makhmalbaf had just started making films. One day I went to see Akbar Radi, who had just seen The Cyclist (1989). We talked about how Makhmalbaf had been brutally opposed by the critics, some of them even had called him names. There was a toxic atmosphere. Most intellectuals were suspicious of him, because he had come from inside the regime and they said terrible thing about him and what he had done after the revolution with people who had a different opinion than him. I don’t know why I defended him. I even made up stories. I even told everyone that I personally knew Makhmalbaf and said he was a good guy and he had good intentions. I heard someone had told him that Moniroo had been saying good things about you, but apparently, he didn’t even know who I was. Once, I met him. I asked him why he didn’t make romantic films. Because I felt that our society needed such stories. And let me be honest with you, when I heard he had made Time of Love, I was pretty proud of myself. 

Q: I’m studying for my master’s degree and I’m doing research on your works. Could I contact you via email or telephone?

A: It’s customary in the modern world that if a student wants to critique a work, they have to put lots of effort into it, they have to read, research, and then write whatever they want. Doing research or writing a critique on a book is not about interviewing the author. Otherwise no one would ever write anything about Shakespeare or Falkner! When a book is published, the author is not in the picture anymore. Besides, the outlook of the author could be in contrast with the outlook of the reader or the critic for that matter. So, when someone asks me such a thing, I get the feeling that they still don’t know what they’re doing. This is not the way it’s done. 

Q: Are you a feminist?

A: Feminism is about defending the rights of women. I support any movement that in any way fights for the oppressed and the persecuted, whoever they are. 

Q: I’m publishing my story. Could you read it beforehand?

A: I have been doing this for a long time, but I’ve just decided to stop it. For the simple reason that I don’t have enough time to spare. 

Q: Do you know an American publisher who could publish my book?

A: I don’t know any publishers, in America or in Iran. And I cannot recommend anybody’s book for publication. In here, publishing a book has a well-structured procedure. First, your story needs to be approved by the agent. Then this agent could refer you to a publisher. I don’t know anybody here who’s in direct contact with their publishers. Everybody works with their agents. 

Q: Do you know a good translator who could translate my book?

A: I know for a fact that we have a lot of able translators, but I don’t know any of them personally. 

Q: Could you read a book that I’ve published in English and say what you think about its translation?

A: I would read the book by all means, but don’t ask my opinion about the translation. 

Q: When you were in Iran, you had this writing workshop called “The Gypsies”, and you started another one after you moved to the US. Could you explain how it works?

A: I started my workshops in 1993. I had these classes once a week until I left Iran. It was halfway through when I chose the name The Gypsies. We read stories everywhere, in our homes, in parks, in coffeeshops, in bookshops…We had no fixed venue. Anybody could join our classes so long as they wrote or read stories. It was a great experience. I did the same here, but this time online. We would read stories and break them down and exchange experience. 

Q: How come you decided to move to the US?

A: Shahrnoosh Parsipour had sent three application forms for Brown University to one our writer friends. She gave one to me and the other to a friend. We filled in the forms and sent them in. Only I got the admission. It was a funded programme for six months. Ten days to the end of this six months, I sent another application for Nevada University. I enclosed two recommendation letters from Azar Nafisi and Robert Kover, the American writer. I got a scholarship for a two-year programme. This is how I ended up here in the US.

Q: How do you keep yourself occupied these days?

A: Life and work, I learn, I’m in university now. I’ve finished Gothic fictions and for one term I was busy with American short stories. Now I’ve focused my attention on the world literature. I am going to publish my eBooks on my new website soon. So, I need to revise them. And I’m also struggling with a novel I’m writing in English. 

Q: How much do you work on your stories?

A: It depends. Some stories finish in one session, some take years. Ocean in the Vinyards was written only once, while I rewrote Kanizoo for twenty-three times! The Last Stop I rewrote ten times. 

Q: Which short story of yours is your favourite?

A: The Shipwrecked, We’re Only Afraid of the Future, Kanizoo, and The Last Stop.

Q: Some critics have pointed out that you wrote in magical realism. Have all your works been written in this genre?

A: Not necessarily, I use two elements in my stories, a magical and hallucinatory atmosphere, and the reality of the life around me. 

Q: What advice would you give to young writers?

A: Read, read and read. You can’t write without reading.