Born in Tehran, Iran was raised in a Jewish family during revolutionary Iran, she eventually moved to New York City when she was 11. She attended the Lycée Français de New York, and went on to study French literature at NYU with a minor in creative writing. She received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her first novel, "The Septembers of Shiraz", was published in 2007. Sofer is the recipient of the 2008 &lt;a href="PEN/Robert%20W.%20Bingham%20Prize"&gt;PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize&lt;/a&gt; for "The Septembers of Shiraz". She has also won a 2007 Whiting Award for fiction, and has been a resident at Yaddo.