Parisa Saranj

Parisa Saranj is a writer, translator, and contributing editor at Consequence Forum. She was born and raised in Isfahan, Iran, and came to America at the age of 18 years old. She learned English and completed her higher education in the United States, earning a B.A. in journalism and women’s studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2010) and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing at Goucher College (2015).

Her writings on contemporary Iranian politics have been published in several publications, such as Ms. Magazine and Aslan Media.Inc. Her literary translations from Persian (Farsi) have been published online and in print, including Asymptote, West Branch, Two Lines, Your Impossible Voice, Faultline, Hyden’s Ferry Review, Nimrod International Journal of Literature and Art, and Faultline. Her translations of Iranian author and poet, Fereshteh Sari, appear in Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora Anthology (Green Linden Press, 2021).

Parisa is the translator of the children’s book Empty and Me (Lee & Low, 2023) by Azam Mahdavi and Women, Life, Freedom: Our Fight for Human Rights and Equality in Iran (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Iranian human rights lawyer and activist, Nasrin Sotoudeh. She has also translated two documentaries, Nasrin (2020) and Sānsūr (2023), on women’s rights in Iran.

Parisa’s first book-length translation of a novel by Iranian author Nasim Vahabi and her second children’s book translation are forthcoming in 2027. These days, she is working on a memoir about growing up in Iran in the 1990s. Excerpts from the memoir have been published in Defunct and Five Minutes Lit.

Parisa lives in Baltimore with her cat, Abnabatchoobi, which is Persian for lollypop. Her friends who cannot pronounce the kitty’s name call him Choobi for short.