Nahid Rachlin, 27th Annual ODU Literary Festival

Nahid Rachlin came to the US for college from Iran. After college, she decided to stay, and now resides in New York City. She has published novels and short stories. Her novels are: The Heart’s Desire (1995), Married to a Stranger (1993), and Foreigner (1978). Her stories are widely published in journals. For her work, she has received awards and grants, including: a Doubleday-Columbia fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, the Bennet Cerf Award, the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Rachlin is a strong female voice from an Iranian culture which silences such voices. Her work depicts the abandonment and adoption of culture, the dangers of modernization, the Moslem faith, the freedom of women, and the strong and fragile counterparts of individual identity, and the power of home