Mojdeh Marashi

My stories live in the space between memory and myth—where Persian folklore meets family history, where magical realism weaves through lived experience, and where the voices history tried to silence find their way back.

In my What The Doves Said series, a pair of white doves narrate family stories the way traditional Persian storytellers once did: blending the magical tales I grew up hearing with the reverberations of political upheaval, migration, and loss. These are intimate stories about mothers and daughters, secrets and memory, told through a lens that makes the extraordinary feel inevitable and the everyday feel mythic.

I'm also working on a collection that reimagines Persian myths and folklore through diaspora consciousness—exploring what happens when ancient stories travel across time and culture, what survives the crossing, and what transforms.

My translation work (with Chad Sweeney) brought the poetry of H.E. Sayeh to English readers in The Art of Stepping Through Time (White Pine Press, 2011). My writing has appeared in Crazyhorse, Subtropics, Indiana Review, and other literary journals.

I was born in Tehran and now live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I work as both a writer and narrative strategist. I hold two master's degrees from San Francisco State University in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Writing.

I co-founded TaleDecode, a digital archive of 425 literary fairy tales, because I believe understanding how stories endure teaches us something essential about what it means to be human.