Fatemeh Shams, also known as Shahrzad F. Shams, is a Persian poet, literary critic and intersectional feminist. She currently serves as associate professor of Persian literature and gender studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She previously taught Persian literature and language at the University of Oxford, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in the UK. She is the author of A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option Under the Islamic Republic (OUP, 2022) and four collections of poems in Persian and English.
Her poetry has been translated to German, Turkish, Kurdish and English and appeared in Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, Two Lines, Michigan Quarterly Review among others.
She was awarded as the best young Persian poet in 2012 by Jaleh Esfahani Poetry Foundation in London. Her bilingual collection, “When They Broke Down the Door” translated by Dick Davis received Latifeh Yarshater award in 2016 for unique and groundbreaking developments in the form of Ghazal. Her bilingual chapbook “Hopscotch” translated by Armen Davoudian was awarded as the best chapbook of poems by Poetry International Magazine in 2024.
Her research focuses on the intersection of politics, literary production under authoritarian states, and gender. She has been living in exile since the Green Movement Uprising in 2009.