MONIRO RAVANIPOUR is a major cultural and literary figure in postrevolutionary Iran. A prolific author of short stories, novels, children’s book, plays, and screenplays, she is best known for her creation of Jofra, a magical-realist village based on her birthplace on the coast of the Persian Gulf. Among Ravanipour’s most popular titles are The Drowned, Heart of Steel, Gypsy by the Fire, Kanizu, Satan’s Stones, Siria, Siria, and The Frankfurt Airport Woman. She has been the recipient of numerous literary awards, including Best Novel at the Persian Gulf Festival and the Isfahan Literary Festival Prize. In 1998 she received the Golden Tablet Award for Twenty Years of Fiction in Iran. In 2001 she faced trial in Tehran as a result of her advocacy for women’s rights and freedom of speech. In 2006 she was awarded an International Writers Project fellowship at Brown University. Later that year she accepted a three-year visiting-author residency at the Black Mountain Institute’s City of Asylum (UNLV). Two of her titles in Farsi, Kanizu and The Drowned, have been translated into English and are due to be published in 2015. She currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her husband and their son. Omid Fallahazad: You have said that you took writing seriously after a random arrest and a single night spent in jail during the early postrevolution days in Iran. You wanted your success and fame to prevent you from getting killed or forgotten . Ironically, assassination, jail, and other forms of abuse became routine in writers’ lives in Iran. Had you ever foreseen those risks when you were deciding to become a writer? Moniro Ravanipour: Actually, I didn’t make any decision to become a writer, it just happened. OF: How so? MR: I have always enjoyed writing, and did so even when I was a young girl. I liked to listen to stories, to act in plays. But I didn’t take writing seriously until I was arrested. That night in jail, I was alone and it was a terrible night. I felt the cold with my whole body. I thought if I was famous enough, nobody could kill me, or harm me, or make me disappear. So that wasn’t exactly about making a decision to become a writer; it was about being scared, about fearing for my life. But now that I am here, safe and free, believe me, I can’t stop being a writer. Because when I stop writing, I can’t breathe. I get depressed, and I think that I am not alive anymore. OF: But that night in jail, when it occurred to you that you should take writing more seriously, could you ever imagine that becoming a writer would also turn out to be such a dangerous venture? MR: No, no, no, no. OF: Could you predict the risks involved? MR: No. Because I just imagined that if I had the power, the fame, they (the government ) couldn’t kill me; they couldn’t cover feature writing beyond iran Already in Exile” A Conversation with Moniro Ravanipour by Omid Fallahazad “ That night in jail, I was alone and it was a terrible night. I felt the cold with my whole body. I thought if I was famous enough, nobody could kill me, or harm me, or make me disappear. 48 WLT MARCH / APRIL 2015 WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 49 photo : aaron mayes do anything to me. But I never would have predicted that they would kill many writers, regardless of their fame or power. Later, there was a period when it seemed that they had stopped killing writers. By then I had become a member of Kanoon, and I was quite famous. But then they started again and killed many more writers who were as famous as I was. OF: Are you referring to the chain murders of writers in Iran at its height in 1998? MR: Yes. Then I understood that for the extremist, fame provides no safety. They don’t care about your fame; they don’t care about who you are. They don’t care about what you think or what you write about. They just don’t...