Roya Hakakian
Author
ROYA HAKAKIAN has collaborated on over a dozen hours of programming for leading journalism units on network television, including 60 Minutes and ABC Documentary Specials with the late Peter Jennings. Commissioned by UNICEF and narrated by Robert DeNiro, Roya's most recent film, Armed and Innocent, on the subject of the involvement of underage children in wars around the world, was a nominee for best short documentary at several festivals around the world. Roya is a well renowned author and she is listed among the leading new voices in Persian. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies around the world, and her opinion columns, essays, and book reviews appear in English language publications, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal among them. Roya is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and has served on the board of Refugees International. Her memoir (translated into several languages) of growing up a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (Crown) has a myriad of accolades. Her second nonfiction book, the Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (Grove/Atlantic) was named a Notable Book of 2011 by the New York Times Book Review. Her most recent work, A Beginner's Guide to America for the Immigrant and the Curious was published by Knopf in 2021.