Ezzat Goushegir
Ezzat Goushegir (Persian: عزت گوشه‌گیر) is a fiction writer and playwright born in Iran and living in the U.S. since 1986. She has published four books in Persian, including two collections of short stories. She began her play writing career in 1976, when her first play "Beginning of Bloom" was produced for Iranian National Television followed by the “Middle East Odyssey” at Culture and Art Hall in Tehran. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa. Since coming to the United States she has been writing both in English and Persian. Her plays have been produced by  a number of theater companies U.S., Canada, China, England, Sweden and Iran. She currently contributes a weekly memoir and many other writings to Shahrvand, the Persian-language magazine based in Toronto, and since 2003 she teaches at DePaul University in Chicago. She is a regular contributor to literary journals, and her writing has appeared in publications in Iran, Europe, and Canada. She was a Fellow Writer in the Iowa City International Writing Program, contributed in the Conference of International Women’s Playwrights, was a Writer-in- Residence at the University of Maryland, also has been a co-director and dramaturge  of a reading series at New Federal Theatre in New York. She is the member of “The Dramatists Guild of America” and “The Association of Writers and Writing Program”. Norman Felton award)