Thursday, Sept. 20, 7 pm, Zara Houshmand, Shohreh Aghdashloo & Sussan Deyhim, introduced by Sholeh Wolpé present A Mirror Garden: The Life of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

Co-author and theatre artist Zara Houshmand presents an event exclusive to Southern California when she reads from and signs her memoir A Mirror Garden on the life of famed Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. Academy Award nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo will give a dramatic reading, and interntional vocalist Sussan Deyhim will sing solo. The evening will be introduced by poet and translator Sholeh Wolpé, who will moderate a discussion later in the evening.

Seating limited, RSVP early to 310.657.5511. Admission is free with suggested purchase of one copy of A Mirror Garden per couple.

At the Beverly Hills Library Auditorium, 444 N. Rexford Dr., Beverly Hills 90210.

This program made possible by Shari Rezai, Mina Eghbal and a grant from Poets & Writers. It is cosponsored by OCPC Magazine.

More about Shohreh Aghdashloo.  More about Sussan Deyhim.

"A Mirror Garden is a story about the different aspects of one person—a woman who is a wife, a mother and an artist—and how, after many years, she finds herself as both a woman and as an artist. It is also the story of a place and of this particular woman's love of a country, Iran, which despite her years apart from it and despite its tempestuous history, remains forever in her heart. It is also a timeless and very timely memoir of home and self-identity."
—June Sawyer, SF Chronicle

Zara Houshmand, author of A Mirror Garden (with Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian) is an Iranian-American writer whose work has focused on opening the borders between different cultures. Raised in the Philippines, educated in England, with a degree from London University in English Literature, she lived in Iran for seven years before the revolution. Living in the U.S. since 1980, she has worked in high tech industries and was involved in the earliest development of interactive media, including virtual reality technologies for the Internet. This experience led her to the creation of a virtual reality art installation, Beyond Manzanar, in collaboration with Tamiko Thiel. The piece, which explores parallels between the lives of Japanese-Americans during World War II and Middle Easterners in the US now, has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Art. She has also edited a series of books representing a long-term dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Western scientists. Meanwhile, she worked in theatre as a writer, director, and designer, studying with Bijan Mofid whose plays she translated and produced. Her own first play, "The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be", was produced at the Burbage Theatre in Los Angeles in 1986. An interest in traditional Asian theatre forms led her to study shadow puppetry in Indonesia and to work with Chaksampa, the Tibetan opera company, for many years. Zara's poetry has been published in the anthologies A World Between and Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been and in many journals. She is a contributing editor for Words Without Borders, the online magazine of literary translation. Her translations of Mowlana’s rubaiyat appeared daily for a year on Iranian.com and were published in Ghaht-e Korshid. She is currently at work on a novel.

More Praise for A Mirror Garden

"Captivating . . . Sumptuously detailed.
—Megan O’Grady, Vogue

"A Mirror Garden introduces the captivating story of a unique artist. Monir's art is beguiling, and so is the story of how she came to be a creator and collector of beautiful things."
–Her Majesty Queen Noor

"This thought-provoking, heartbreaking, delightful memoir spirits us across the battlefield of today's headlines into a kaleidoscopic landscape of Iran in all its magical richness. Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian boldly follows her dream of becoming an artist in the West before following love back to a new Iran. Like a Persian Audrey Hepburn, she recounts her adventures among boorish fanatics, elegant spies, celebrities, and, best of all, her own eccentric family, with a combination of plainspoken pluck and grace under pressure that is inspiring and irresistible."
—Tom Reiss, author of The Orientalist

"Some people have the magic touch. Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian seems to be one of them . . . Full of many delightful anecdotes."
—June Sawyers, San Francisco Chronicle

"This graceful memoir maps an intrepid trajectory."
—The New Yorker

"She has not allowed the past to either trap her in nostalgia or corner her into defensive bitterness. In every world she has traveled, she has never been petty . . . She labels one of her photographs . . . "A Woman in Full." The reader will come away from these pages agreeing wholeheartedly."
—Roger Gathman, Austin American-Statesman

Read about
A Mirror Garden in the New Yorker
A Mirror Garden on Knopf page
A Mirror Garden in the San Francisco Chronicle

Read an Excerpt on Iranian.com