About Farzaneh Milani
Born 1947. Farzaneh Milani is an Iranian writer, lecturer, scholar, poet, translator and literary scholar.
Farzaneh Milani (; born ) is an Iranian-born American scholar, author, poet, translator, and educator. Milani teaches Persian literature and women's studies at the University of Virginia; and serves as the Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures. She is also a poet, award-winning translator, and a recipient of the Carnegie Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Milani's 1992 book Veils and Words: the Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers (Syracuse, 1992), has seen its 16th printing.
Biography Milani was born in Tehran, Iran in about 1947, she was the only daughter in a family of five children. Milani had attended Catholic co-educational French schools before relocating to the United States.
She, her husband, and her unborn son arrived in America in December 1967. There, she attended the California State University, East Bay (formally California State University, Hayward), graduating with a BA degree in French Literature in 1970; and the University of California, Los Angeles, obtaining a PhD in Comparative Literature in 1979.
In 1986, after a four-year stint at her alma mater as an instructor of Persian Language and Literature, she took a position at the University of Virginia. At the University of Virginia, she has been the recipient of several awards, including the "All University Teaching Award" in 1998, and a "University Seminar's Teaching Award" in 2001. She received a Storr's Fellowship in 2001; a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2002–2003; and was a Carnegie Fellow from 2006 to 2007 for a project entitled "Remapping the Cultural Geography of Iran: Islam, Women, and Mobility." Her translation (with Kaveh Safa) of A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems of Simin Behbahani won the Lois Roth Literary Award in Translation.
Milani is the author of over 100 articles, op-eds, prologues, epilogues, forewords and afterwords in both Persian and English. She has guest edited two issues of Nimeye-Digar, a Persian-language feminist journal, IranNameh, and Iranian Studies: A Journal of the International Society for Iranian Studies. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ms., Reader's Digest, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR's All Things Considered.
2011: Words not Swords: Iranian Women and the Freedom of Movement Selected poems published in "Nimeye Digar", "Par", "Barrayand", "Daneshju", "Omid", and "Avaye Portland" 2016: Forugh Farrokhzad: A Literary Biography With Unpublished Letters, Persian Circle
Don’t just read it —
keep it.
Full-length biographies made to live with: read them, listen on the way to work, watch them tonight.
- E-book
- Audio
- Video
Instant download · yours to keep · every purchase keeps this site free
Important facts
People in Farzaneh Milani's life
Named in this biography and alive at the same time
Contemporaries
People whose lives overlapped Farzaneh Milani's
Frequently asked questions
Who is Farzaneh Milani?
American academic
When was Farzaneh Milani born?
Farzaneh Milani was born in 1947 in Tehran.
What is Farzaneh Milani's occupation?
Farzaneh Milani is a writer, lecturer, scholar, poet, translator and literary scholar.
What nationality is Farzaneh Milani?
Farzaneh Milani is Iranian.
Sources & further reading
Cite this page
APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Farzaneh Milani. https://biography.guide/farzaneh-milani/
MLA: "Farzaneh Milani." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/farzaneh-milani/.
Chicago: "Farzaneh Milani." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/farzaneh-milani/.
Data last updated: 2026-09-22 · Spot an error? Report a correction.
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons · author & licence
Page generated 2026-09-27 05:03 UTC