FARIBA VAFI was born in 1962 in Tabriz, Iran. She started to write short stories at a very young age. As a young girl, she frequently traveled to Tehran from her hometown of Tabriz, 335 miles away, to buy books and show her writing sketches to a literature teacher. Like most women writers throughout history, marriage and children delayed her plan to become a novelist. Starting to write in 1983, her first short story collection, In the Depth of the Stage (Dar Omgh-e-Sahneh), was published in 1986. The next short story collection, Even While We Are Laughing (Hatta Vaqhti Mikhandidim), came out in 1999. She has written four novels: My Bird (Parandehye man), 2002; Tarlan, 2006; Dream of Tibet (Rowyay-e-Tabbat), 2007; and A Secret in the Alleys (Razi dar Kucheha), 2008. She is currently working on the novel On the Way to the Villa (Dar Rah-e-vila). She lives in Tehran with her husband and two children.

NASRIN JEWELL is professor of economics at St. Catherine University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her current research area is redefining and reevaluating work, specifically applied to women in Iran. She has authored and collaborated on a number of articles on the role of women in economic development, the global economy and the New World Order, and women and work. She has been a Fulbright scholar to Caracas, Venezuela, and was a Midwestern Universities Consortium scholar in Madrid, Spain. Professor Jewell is a member of the board of directors of Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies.

MAHNAZ KOUSHA was professor of sociology at Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her book Voices from Iran: Changing Lives of Iranian Women (Syracuse University Press, 2002) explores family dynamics in Iran. She also conducted collaborative research on life satisfaction and happiness in Iran. Her areas of interest were race, gender, class, and family relationships in the United States and the Middle East.