Mehri Yalfani

Born in Hamadan, Iran, Mehri Yalfani moved to Tehran in the late 1960s to study engineering at the University of Tehran. The only woman in the class, she graduated in electrical engineering. Mehri Yalfani had started to write short stories in high school and her first collection was published in Iran in 1966. For the next decade and a half, she worked as an engineer and raised three children, leaving little chance to write. In 1980, she published the novel Before the Fall, in Farsi, her mother tongue.

In 1985, Mehri Yalfani emigrated with her family, to France and then Canada. Since arriving in Canada she has published in many Farsi and English language journals as well as two collections of short stories and three novels in Farsi, in Sweden, USA and Canada. Her last two novels, Dancing In A Broken Mirror and Far From Home, have also been published in Iran – after approval by the government censors - and occasioned her first trip back in the summer of 2001. Mehri Yalfani has published two collections of short stories in English, Parastoo (Women's Press: 1993) and Two Sisters (TSAR: 1999). Afsaneh's Moon is her first novel in English. She lives in Toronto.