I’m Heidi Kyser, and this is Black Mountain Institute Conversations, an interview series produced by Nevada Public Radio’s Desert Companion in collaboration with the Black Mountain Institute. Every couple of months, we talk with BMI’s Fellows about their passions, inspirations, community initiatives, and … of course … their writing.
Our guest today is Maryam Ala Amjadi, the Black Mountain Institute’s current City of Asylum Fellow. Originally from Iran, she’s an award-winning poet, translator, and author who’s published three collections already. Her fourth, titled Where Is the Mouth of That Word, was published in late 2022 by Poetrywala. And in October 2024, she added another work to her resume, when her first short story “The Ice Seller of Hell,” was released in the journal, Meridians. It won the 2024 Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award for Prose.
Throughout her work, regardless of genre, Maryam probes the fraught existence of women’s civil rights under an oppressive, theocratic regime.
