1. Porochista Khakpour is an Iranian American novelist, essayist, and journalist.
24 Facts About Porochista Khakpour
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Porochista Khakpour is the author of five books, including her 2007 debut novel Sons and Other Flammable Objects.
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Porochista Khakpour was born on January 17,1978, in Tehran, Iran.
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Porochista Khakpour's family made their way to the San Gabriel Valley, briefly living in Monterey Park and Alhambra before finally moving into a two-bedroom, one-bathroom dingbat apartment in South Pasadena, where Khakpour grew up.
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Until age 17, Porochista Khakpour shared a small bedroom with her younger brother.
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Porochista Khakpour grew up as the only Iranian at her elementary school, middle school, and high school.
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Porochista Khakpour was the editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper, graduating from South Pasadena High School in 1996.
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Porochista Khakpour received a Hearst Scholarship to attend Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied under Danzy Senna and Victoria Redel.
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Porochista Khakpour graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 2000 with a BA in liberal arts, with a concentration in creative writing and literature.
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Porochista Khakpour received her MA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars program in 2003, where she studied under Stephen Dixon and Alice McDermott.
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At age 29, Porochista Khakpour published her debut novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects, in September 2007.
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In 2011, Porochista Khakpour was the guest editor of Guernica's first Iranian-American issue, curating works from writers including Said Sayrafiezadeh, Azadeh Moaveni, Nahid Rachlin, Hooman Majd, Roger Sedarat, and Sholeh Wolpe.
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In 2020, Porochista Khakpour published her fourth book, an essay collection entitled Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity, as a Vintage Original from Penguin Random House.
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Between 2008 and 2010, Porochista Khakpour was a visiting professor at Bucknell University.
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From 2014 to 2017, Porochista Khakpour taught at Bard College as a writer-in-residence.
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Porochista Khakpour has been a visiting writer at Wesleyan University and Northwestern University.
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Porochista Khakpour has held adjunct appointments at Columbia University, Fordham University, and Wesleyan University.
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Porochista Khakpour was guest faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine.
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In 2015, after nominating Can Xue for the Neustadt Prize as a member of the jury, Porochista Khakpour arranged for Can Xue and her husband Lu Yong to tour the United States.
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Porochista Khakpour wrote the introduction to the 2017 English translation of Can Xue's novel Frontier.
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Porochista Khakpour is a recipient of the 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing.
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Porochista Khakpour has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Northwestern University, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ucross Foundation, Yaddo and Djerassi.
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Porochista Khakpour's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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Porochista Khakpour identifies as Muslim, although she was raised agnostic by her family.