Ninth Annual Bita Prize for Persian Arts: Shahrnush Parsipur

Award Recipient: Shahrnush Parsipur

We are very pleased to announce that the recipient of the Ninth Bita Prize for Persian Arts is Ms. Shahrnush Parsipur. Ms. Parsipur is an acclaimed novelist and writer whose books have been translated in several languages. Her collection of short stories, Women Without Men (available in English) was adapted into a feature film by Shirin Neshat.

The award ceremony will include talks by Dean Richard Saller, Bita Daryabari, Abbas Milani, and Ms. Shahrnush Parsipur. Clips from several of Shirin Neshat's films will be showed. The award ceremony will be followed by tea/coffee/dessert reception. 

We are also very pleased to be giving out signed copies of Touba and the Meaning of Night, by Ms. Parsipur to attendees. 

The annual Bita Prize for Persian Arts is awarded to an artist of Iranian ancestry whose work, in the course of their lifetime, has exhibited singular achievements in both the realm of aesthetics and in the essence of defending the rights of artists to create, free from any fetters. The recipient is invited to Stanford University to give a public lecture and receive the prize. Since its inception in 2008, the Bita Prize has been awarded to outstanding Iranian scholars, artists, and creators. 

The Bita Daryabari Endowment in Persian Letters supports the program in Iranian Studies to promote teaching, research, and scholarship at Stanford relating to Iran, including the area formerly known as Persia, and people of Iranian or Persian heritage. The Endowment also provides support for the Bita Daryabari Visiting Lecturer in the field of Persian poetry, literature, and culture.

Event is in English

Shahrnush Parsipur was born in Tehran, Iran and received her BA in Sociology from the University of Tehran. She started her literary career when she was just sixteen, writing short stories and articles.

When she was twenty-eight, she wrote her first novel, The Dog and the Long Winter. In the same year, she was imprisoned for several months after protesting the execution of two journalist-poet activists. She left Iran to study Chinese philosophy and language in France. There, she wrote her second novel, Plain and Small Adventures of the Spirit of the Tree in 1977.

Due to the problems associated with the Islamic Revolution in 1979, she could not complete her education in France, and had to return to Iran. As a result of a misunderstanding, she was imprisoned in the Islamic Republic of Iran's political prison for four and a half years. She later wrote a memoir recalling her time in prison (the English translation is titled Kissing the Sword).

As soon as she was released from jail, she published her acclaimed novel Touba and the Meaning of Night in 1989. In 1990 she wrote Women without Men, a collection of short stories. As a result of openly referring to the issue of virginity in this collection, she ended up in prison again on two different occasions.

She has been awarded the Premio Feronia literary prize, the Statue of Arash from the Tirgan Festival; received the Hellman-Hammett grant twice, the honorary tablet of Cyrus the Great from the Encyclopedia Iranica Foundation; and she holds an Honorary Doctorate from Brown University in Providence, RI.

Her other works include: The Blue Reason, Shiva, On the Wings of Wind, Tea Ceremony in Presence of Wolf, Crystalline Pendants, Men From Various Civilizations, and Asieh between Two Worlds. Her books have been translated into several languages. She has also written more than 400 articles about modern Iranian literature in different literary publications.

Since her books are banned in Iran, Ms. Parsipur lives in the United States and continues to work, teach, and give lectures.

Shirin Neshat, the prominent photographer and filmmaker, created a full length film based on her book, Women without Men (film, 2009). The film was awarded the Silver Lion of the Venice Film Festival. The project was filmed in Morocco and since it was impossible to bring actors from Iran, Shahrnush acted in the movie. Ms. Neshat also created a film project based on Touba and the Meaning of Night (2002).