By Fatemeh Shams, Armen Davoudian
Imprint: Copper Canyon Press
Fatemeh Shams’s NABOOD, pitched in the tradition of Ilya Kaminsky and Mahmoud Darwish, referencing the classic opening of Persian fairy tales, “yeki bood, yeki nabood” (there was, there was not) to explore what is no longer-the Iran the author knew and grew up in, a father lost to Parkinson’s, a fading mother tongue-and what never was—a life unbroken by war and exile, womanhood, and queerness unburdened by an oppressive regime-and the double-exile of diaspora, from homeland and from language, translated by Armen Davoudian, to Michael Wiegers at Copper Canyon Press, at auction, for publication in spring 2027, by Rayhane Sanders at Massie McQuilkin & Altman (NA).