1. These statistics are mainly taken from Hassan Mirabedini, “Dastan nevisiy-e zanan: gam hay-e larzan-e avaliy-e” [Women’s Fiction Writing: First Wobbly Steps], Zanan, Mar. 2007, and Nazila Fathi, “Women Writing Novels Emerge as Stars in Iran,” New York Times, June 29, 2005.

2. Ali Akbar Moshir-Salimi, Zanan-e sokhanvar az yek hezar sal-e pish ta emruz [Persian Women Writers from a Thousand Years Ago until Today] (Tehran: Elmi: 1956–58).

3. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929; reprint, New York: Harcourt, 1957).

4. Keshavarz-e Sadr, Az Rabe’e ta Parvin [From Rabe’e to Parvin] (Tehran: Kavian, 1956).

5. My Bird is also being translated into Italian.

6. Personal communication, May 23, 2009.

7. As Nazila Fathi observes, in Tarlan, Vafi “describes women from poor families, who enter the harsh environment of the police school. The book arouses readers’ sympathy for policewomen who must enforce the strict social code of Islam and who are widely resented in Iran for harassing women who deviate from Muslim dress rules,” New York Times, June 29, 2005.

8. Nazila Fathi, New York Times, June 29, 2005.

9. For a biographical sketch of Jamal Mir-Sadeqi and a translation of one of his short stories, “Through the Veil of Fog,” see Stories From Iran: A Chicago Anthology 1921–1991, ed. Heshmat Moayyed (Washington, D.C.: Mage, 1991), 202–19. Mir-Sadeqi is the author of Narrative Literature, the Tale, the Short Story, the Novel: A Look at Contemporary Fiction Writing in Iran, among several other books.

10. “Rahat shodi pedar” [You’re at Peace Now, Father] also appears in Dar Omq-e-sahneh [In the Depth of the Stage] (Tehran: Cheshmeh, 1996), 14–19.

11. Vafi’s short stories, which are often between four and seven pages long in the original Persian, have been called “sudden fiction” or “flash fiction.” Perhaps the increasingly hurried impatience of life compels the skilled short-story writer to offer her tales in finite, quick bursts.

12. Few of Vafi’s short stories have been translated into English. For “The Flight of the Sun,” see Franklin Lewis and Farzin Yazdanfar, In a Voice of Their Own (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 1996). For “My Mother Behind the Glass,” see A Feast in the Mirror: Stories by Contemporary Iranian Women, ed. and trans. Mohammad Mehdi Khorami and Shouleh Vatanabadi (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 201–5. “My Mother Behind the Glass” is also translated in Afsaneh: Short Stories by Iranian Women, ed. and trans. Kaveh Basmenji (London: Saqi, 2005), 172–76. For “On the Way to the Villa,” trans. Yassaman Assa, see Iran’s Literature Today: Glimmer in the Mist, www.iransliterature.com/page.asp?16.

13. Stories from Parvin E’tessami is part of a collection entitled The Rereading of Ancient Books for Children, which contains thirty books from thirteen classic Iranian authors and poets. “Author Vafi narrates E’tessami’s poems for children,” Tehran Times, May 20, 2009. V. 10595.

14. Fariba Vafi, “A Woman on the Shore,” Dar Omq-e-sahneh [In the Depth of the Stage], 84–87.