1. Roya Hakakian is an Iranian American Jewish journalist, lecturer, and writer.
21 Facts About Roya Hakakian
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Roya Hakakian is the author of several books, including an acclaimed memoir in English called Journey from the Land of No, Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, and A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious.
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Roya Hakakian was barely a teenager during the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
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Roya Hakakian studied psychology at Brooklyn College and studied poetry under the American poet and writer Allen Ginsberg during her time there.
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Roya Hakakian was a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2000 to 2004.
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Roya Hakakian was a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and served on the board of Refugees International.
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In 2018, Roya Hakakian was a scholar at Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University.
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Roya Hakakian is a permanent member at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Roya Hakakian has been a featured speaker at many colleges and universities as well as she has appeared on CBS This Morning, PBS' Now with Bill Moyers, The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC, among others.
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Roya Hakakian carefully chooses a handful of personal stories which illuminate the greater stories she wishes to tell, namely how the lives of women, Jewish community, and secular Iranians changed in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution.
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Roya Hakakian begins the book from the moment of the crime and follows the events until the historic verdict that the court issued in April 1997.
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Roya Hakakian is the author of two collections of poetry in Persian, the first of which, For the Sake of Water, was nominated as poetry book of the year by Iran News in 1993.
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Roya Hakakian was listed among the leading new voices in Persian poetry in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World.
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Roya Hakakian has contributed to the Persian Literary Review, and served as the poetry editor of Par Magazine for six years.
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Roya Hakakian has extensively written about the plight of women in the Middle East with a particular focus on Iran.
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Roya Hakakian focuses on Jewish issues in her writings, making note of unique aspects of Jewish community and commenting on antisemitism in America and abroad.
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Roya Hakakian has appeared on a variety of podcasts and radio stations, including a WQXR collaboration with The Metropolitan Opera in a conversation about Giuseppe Verdi and the experience of exile, as well as on the podcast EconTalk.
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In 2020, Roya Hakakian signed the controversial "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate," which appeared on July 7 in Harper's Magazine; other signatories include feminist Gloria Steinem, writer JK Rowling and linguist Noam Chomsky.
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Roya Hakakian later explained her decision to sign the letter in a subsequent article where she argued that the well-being of the American democracy was entwined with the well-being of other democracies and democratic activists around the world.
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Roya Hakakian is a vocal critic of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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Roya Hakakian has since published several essays for The Atlantic about the ongoing movement and offered commentary on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and MSNBC.