Born and raised in Tehran, Shahrnush Parsipur received her B.A. in sociology from Tehran University in 1973 and studied Chinese language and civilization at the Sorbonne from 1976 to 1980.
Her second novel was Touba and the Meaning of Night, which Parsipur wrote after spending four years and seven months in prison. In 1990, she published a short novel, consisting of connected stories, called Women Without Men. The Iranian government banned Women Without Men in the mid-1990s and put pressure on the author to desist from such writing. Early in 1990, Parsipur finished her fourth novel, a 450-page story of a female Don Quixote called BlueColored Reason, which remained unavailable as of early 1992. In 1994, she went to the United States and wrote Prison Memoir, 450 pages of four different times that she was imprisoned. In 1996, she wrote her fifth novel Shiva, a work of science fiction in 900 pages. In 1999, she published her sixth novel, The Plain and Small Adventures of the Spirit of the Tree, in 300 pages. In 2002, she published her seventh novel On the Wings of Wind, in 700 pages.
Shahrnush Parsipur has since left Iran and currently resides in the United States. She is the recipient of the first International Writers Project Fellowship from the Program in Creative Writing and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.
She has published eight books and numerous short stories, novellas, collections and translations.
Since 2006, Parsipur has been making different programs for Radio Zamaneh, situated in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Parsipur will give a book reading on Thursday, March 10 at 7 p.m. in the Hemingway Center and a public talk on Friday March 11 at 7 p.m. in the Simplot Ballroom, both on the Boise State University campus.
This event is in collaboration with: Cultural and Ethnic Diversity Board, Gender Studies, MFA in Creative Writing and World Languages.