Roya Hakakian

Born and raised in a family of Jewish educators in Tehran, Roya arrived in the US as a refugee in 1985. Her writing often deals with the topics of exile, displacement, political and religious persecution, as well as the struggle of people, especially women, against authoritarianism. Listed among the leading voices of contemporary Persian poetry in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, she composed two collections of poems in Persian and is featured in Strange Times My Dear: The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature. 

Her books include an award-winning memoir, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (Crown, 2005), Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (Grove/Atlantic, 2011), and A Beginner’s Guide to America for the Immigrant and the Curious (Knopf, 2021). These publications have been translated into other languages and ranked on numerous influential lists, including the New York Times Book Reviews’ Notable Books, Newsweek’s Top Ten Not-to-be-missed books of the year, Kirkus Reviews Best Non-Fictions of the year, Barnes & Noble’s Pick of the Week, Ms. Magazine Must Read of the Summer, Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year, and Elle Magazine’s Best Nonfiction of the year.  

Roya’s essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, and Quillette. She has contributed to CBS’ 60 Minutes and appears regularly on CNN and NPR. A former Guggenheim and SNF Agora Institute Fellow at John Hopkins University, Roya is currently a fellow at Yale University’s Davenport College and a Moynihan Center Public Scholar at The City College of New York (CCNY).  A founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and member of American Purpose’s editorial board, Roya has testified before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.