Azadeh Moaveni


Azadeh Moaveni is an Iranian–American journalist and writer.

Education

Moaveni was born in 1976 in Palo Alto, California and she grew up in San Jose, California. Her parents had been exiled to the United States by the Iranian Revolution. She studied politics at Oakes College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, graduating in 1998. She won a Fulbright Fellowship to Egypt, and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo.

Career

For three years, Moaveni worked across the Middle East as a reporter for Time magazine, before joining the Los Angeles Times to cover the war in Iraq. On February 4, 2005 Azadeh released her first book, a memoir entitled Lipstick Jihad, which details her experience growing up Iranian in America and of living in Iran as an American journalist who specialized in reporting on nonviolent resistance to the regime of the Mullahs. She co-authored Iran Awakening with Shirin Ebadi.
She worked with editor David Ebershoff on her memoir, Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran, for Random House, published on April 13, 2009. Her 2019 book, Guest House for Young Widows, has been shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize.
In March 2020 she appeared in a panel discussion at Adelaide Writers' Week, along with Omani novelist Johka Alharthi and Lebanese-British journalist Zahra Hankir.
She continues to report on Iran and the Middle East for Time magazine.

Personal life

She is married to an Iranian and together they have a son and live in England.

Works