The Story of Memories: Against Silence and Oblivion by Moniro Ravanipour

Abstract:

The EOM Institute of Iranian Studies held another session of its distinguished lectures by inviting Ms. Moniro Ravanipour, a renowned writer and poet. This event took place on Friday July 26th, 2024 at Isabel Bader Theatre, Toronto. Around 500 people participated in this engaging event. Ms. Ravanipour started this evening with a presentation about her own life experiences and memories. Then after a short break, she recited some her latest poems in Persian.

Bio:

Moniro Ravnipour is an Iranian-American and internationally acclaimed innovative writer who is the author of ten titles published in Iran, and many more in United States, including two collections of short fiction, Kanizu and Satan’s Stones, and the novels The Drowned, Heart of Steel, and Gypsy by Fire. Her tales, described as “reminiscent in their fantastic blend of realism, myth, and superstition of writers like Rulfo, Garcia Marquez, even Tutuola,” frequently take as their setting the small, remote village in southern Iran where she was born. Nahid Mozaffari, editor of Strange Times, My Dear: The International PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature, wrote that Ravanipour “has been successful in the treatment of the complex subjects of tradition and modernity, juxtaposing elements of both, and exposing them in all their contradictions without idealizing either.” Ravanipour was among seventeen activists to face trial in Iran for their participation in the 2000 Berlin Conference, accused of taking part in anti-Iran propaganda. Copies of her current work were recently stripped from bookstore shelves in Iran in a countrywide police action. She is a former Brown University International Writers Project Fellow.