On Tuesday night, the Binghamton Center for Writers kicked off its Spring Readers’ Series with award-winning Iranian author Nahid Rachlin.
“Writing is a very ingrained need now. When I don’t write, I don’t feel as good,” Rachlin said.
Rachlin shared vulnerable moments and laughs with the crowd, reading excerpts from both her first novel, “Foreigner,” and her most recent book, the memoir “Persian Girls.” She has also written three other novels — “Jumping Over Fire,” “Married to a Stranger” and “The Heart’s Desire” — and the short story collection “Veils.”
Born in Iran, Rachlin was adopted by her aunt Maryam, who couldn’t have a child of her own. When she was 9 years old, Rachlin’s father decided that she should be reunited with her birth family. Finding herself without a sense of belonging, Rachlin turned to books to connect with — especially those banned in Iran.
“There was this bookstore man I befriended, and he would carry these censored books in his basement,” Rachlin said. “He would have white covers on them with no titles, and when he became friends with someone he could trust, like me, he started selling the censored works.”
Much of Rachlin’s work focuses on the struggles of both Iranian immigrants and people living in Iran. “Foreigner,” written during her year at Stanford University under the Stegner Fellowship, highlights the difficulties of an Iranian woman who returned to her country after 14 years in America.
At age 17, Rachlin left Iran to attend college in the United States, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology. However, what really drove her to the U.S. was her desire to write and her inability to do so freely in her native country.
“I was afraid to express myself because my father was always over my shoulder looking at everything I wrote and everything I read,” Rachlin said.
She admits that even now, she has an aversion to writing in Farsi because of the memories of her father. Rachlin said that writing “Persian Girls” brought up painful memories, proving to be one of her most difficult challenges as a writer.
During the reading, Rachlin talked about her relationship with her sister, with whom she became especially close to once she returned to her birth family. She believed that her sister, and her inability to escape the oppression of a bad marriage, was an important topic to tackle in her memoir.
“Even though it was painful, I wanted to write it because I wanted to bring her back to life,” Rachlin said. “I really wanted to tell her whole life, the way she got trapped, in the book form, somehow making it live on like that.”
Along with the critical acclaim Rachlin has gotten for her novels, she has also been featured in over 50 magazines, including The Virginia Quarterly Review and Shenandoah. One of her short stories was even featured on NPR’s “Selected Shorts.” She says that through writing, she has found a way to find her own sense of belonging.
“You can make up your own world in some ways, and it’s very great psychologically to write fiction,” Rachlin said. “You can escape into these other lives, and you don’t have to identify with anything.”
Binghamton Center for Writers’ Spring Readers’ Series
From the Writers’ Series website
Tuesday, March 4 at 8 p.m. in Science I, Room 149 — A reading from Karen Brown, winner of the BU John Gardner Fiction Book Award for “Little Sinners and Other Stories,” which also won the Prairie Schooner Prize and was named a Best Book of 2012 by Publishers Weekly. This past summer two new books were published: the novel, “The Longings of Wayward Girls,” and the short story collection, “Pins & Needles.”
Tuesday, March 18 at 8 p.m. in Science I, Room 149 — A reading from BU alums Heather McNaugher and Jacob White. Poet McNaugher is the author of “System of Hideouts” and fiction writer White is the author of the story collection “Being Dead in South Carolina.” McNaugher is poetry editor for Fourth River while White is fiction editor for Green Mountains Review.
Monday, March 24 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in Library North 1104 — A Writing Life: Conversations with Writer/Editors with Jen Grow & Laura Shovan of Little Pawtuxent Review, publishers of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry and artwork from writers in the mid-Atlantic region and beyond. An informal Q&A that is open to all.
Tuesday, March 25 at 8 p.m. in Science I, Room 149 — A reading from January Gill O’Neil, author of the poetry collection “Underlife” and a forthcoming collection, “Misery Islands” (fall 2014, also from CavanKerry Press). She is the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and an assistant professor of English at Salem State University.
Monday, April 7 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in Library North 1104 — A Writing Life: Conversations with Writer/Editors with John Gallaher, poetry editor of The Laurel Review, a literary journal that publishes poetry, short fiction, essays and reviews. Emphasizes the poem or story or essay that presents a real investigation of the art and what it is to be human. An informal Q&A event that is open to all.
Tuesday, April 29 at 8 p.m. in Science I, Room 149 — A reading with Daniel Donaghy, author of “Start with the Trouble” (University of Arkansas Press), which won the 2010 Paterson Award and was named a finalist for the BU Milt Kessler Poetry Award and the Connecticut Book Award, and “Streetfighting” (BkMk Press), which was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize.
Wednesday, April 30 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in Library North 1104 — A Writing Life: Conversations with Writer/Editors with Tim Green, editor of Rattle, a magazine which describes its mission as promoting the practice of poetry and a community of poets. An informal Q&A that is open to all.