Maryam Hooleh was born in 1978 in Tehran and started writing from an early age. She is a challenging voice of her generation and her disquietingly surreal poems have been translated to English, Swedish, French, Kurdish and Turkish. She has been considered among the most formidable representatives of the new generation of Iranian poets in exile.
At the age of 17, Maryam left Iran illegally, bound for Greece on foot, arriving in Athens after 23 days. She lived in Greece for one year before returning to Iran. Mansoureh Saboori, an Iranian-American director and filmmaker, made a documentary about her life, her poems and her trip to Greece entitled Another Birth (named after the much-loved book by Forugh Farrokhzad, Iran's foremost contemporary poet, now deceased).
Maryam's first book The Kite Will Never Fly in My Hands was published in 1998, followed by a second, In the Alleys of Athens, in 1999.
In 2000 she was invited by The Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation to Sweden, where her third book Cursed Booth was released by Baran publications. In 2003 she won a literary scholarship from Swedish PEN and moved to Sweden, where she now lives and has since published three more books of her poetry.
Selected Bibliography
The Kite Will Never Fly in My Hands, Midland Graphic Publishing, Chicago, 1998
In the Alleys of Athens, Mir-Kasra Publishing, Tehran, 1999
Cursed Booth, Baran Publications, Stockholm, 2000
Contemporaneous Leprosy, Arzan Publications, Stockholm, 2004
Hell INC, Arzan publications, Stockholm, 2004
The Sticky Dreams of a Banished Butterfly (e-book and audiobook)
