About

Farnaz Fatemi  is an Iranian American writer and editor in Santa Cruz, CA. She is is Santa Cruz County’s Poet Laureate for 2023 & 2024. She is also a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective, which presents a weekly radio show and podcast in Santa Cruz County and hosts readings and poetry-related events. She was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Farnaz’s debut book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر , was published in Sept 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, from Kent State University Press and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly. Farnaz is a recipient of a Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and an Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She is a Tennessee Williams Scholar (Sewanee Writers Conference) and she has been an artist in residence at Storyknife, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, PLAYA, SWWIM (Betsy Hotel), Willapa Bay AiR, Jentel, I-Park, and Marble House Project. She is a recipient of an Arts Council Santa Cruz County Develop Grant and a Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman Fellowship (via Djerassi) and has been honored by the International Literary Awards (Center for Women Writers), Poets on the Verge (Litquake SF), Best of the Net Nonfiction, and Pushcart.

Farnaz’s poems and lyric essays appear or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Rhino Poetry, Alaska Quarterly Review, No Tokens Journal, Academy of American Poets (Poets.org), Tab Journal, Nowruz Journal, Koukash, Pedestal Magazine, Jung Journal, Grist Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, Crab Orchard Review, SWWIM Daily, Tahoma Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, phren-z.org, and several anthologies (including, most recently, Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora, My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices of the Iranian Diaspora and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me).

100-Word Bio

Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer and Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate for 2023 & 2024, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was published in September 2022. It won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, won an honorable mention from the Foreword Indies, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly. She is a California Individual Artist Fellow and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Some of her poems and lyric essays appear or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Academy of American Poets (poets.org), No Tokens Journal, Nowruz Journal, Pedestal Review, Tab Journal, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others.

Publications

Sister Tongue was chosen by Tracy K. Smith as the winner of the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Kent State University Press published Sister Tongue August 31, 2022.

Two Poems in Koukash Review, January 2023

“Passage” aired on radio station KALW and KALW.org, Sept 2022.

Three Poems in Olney Magazine, August 2022 (Featured poet of the week, August 23).

“Khanevadeh,” in Nowruz Journal, Spring 2022.

“We Want Things We Say We Don’t,” in Pedestal Magazine, Issue 89, Winter/Spring 2022.

Four Poems in Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, Volume. 16, Number 1. Winter 2022.

“Disturbance Regime,” in Catamaran Literary Reader, Issue 35, Winter 2022

“Sister,” and “Woman in the White Chador,” poems in Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora, ed. Christopher Nelson (Green Linden Press, 2021)

“Playing Softball after 21 years,” poem in Why to These Rocks, ed. Lisa Alvarez (Heyday Books, 2021).

“Everything Is Made of Labor,” poem in How to Love the World, ed. James Crews (Workman Publishing, 2021).

“Artifacts” in The Shore Issue 9, March 2021.

Shortlist, DISQUIET Literary Contest 2021.

“Bee Leaf” in Red Wheelbarrow National Edition, 2020, Volume 21.

“Song-Spattered Sky” poem set to music by Alexandra Gardner. Soprano/Piano. World Premiere November 2020. More info here.

Two poems “Sleeping in the Woods with Bats” and “When I Kneel…” in The Signal House Edition out of the UK, Issue 3, August 2020.

“Field Marks” in SWWIM Every Day, March 2020.

“The Color of the Bricks,” poem-essay in My Shadow is My Skin, eds. Leila Emery and Katherine Whitney (University of Texas press, March 2020).

Sister Tongue, book manuscript. Finalist for the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Book Prize 2019. (Texas Review Press).

“Don’t Forget, This is Not You.” Crab Orchard Review, vol. 24, Issue 1, June 2019.

“Untranslated.” In Tahoma Literary Review, Spring 2019.

“Forbidden” and “The Woman in the White Chador.” In Halal If You Hear Me: BreakBeat Poets vol. 3, ed. Fatimah Ashgar and Safia Elhillo. Haymarket: Chicago, April 2019.

“The Woman in the White Chador.” In Catamaran Literary Reader, Summer 2018. More info here.

“Sister Tongue.” Poem-Essay. Grist Journal (2019), Runner-up for ProForma prize 2018. Honorable Mention in 2018 for International Literary Awards, Penelope Niven Prize for Non-fiction. Finalist in 2017 for Kurt Brown Prize, Non-fiction.

Selected Poems, phren-z.org. Here and Here

"Windstorm," in In Plein Air, an anthology of place, published by Poetic License, 2017. 

"Irrigant," in Comstock Review, 2017.

"We Were Never the Same." Poem in "This Thing Called Life," special issue of Delaware Poetry Review dedicated to the Music and Spirit of Prince, Spring 2017.

"Unspent, Spent" in Porter Gulch Review, 2016.

"The Color of the Bricks." Lyric essay in Tupelo Quarterly, Spring 2015.  Finalist for Best of the Net, 2015. 

"Advice for a Dictionary." Poem in Squaw Valley Review Poetry Anthology., 2015. 

"The Edge." Poem in Catamaran Literary Reader, 2014.

Poems and prose anthologized in Love and Pomegranates: Artists and Wayfarers on Iran (2013) and Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora (2006).