| Firoozeh
Dumas was born in Abadan, Iran and, in the 1970’s, moved
to Whittier, California with her family at the age of seven.
After a two-year stay, they moved back to Iran and lived in
Ahvaz and Tehran. Two years later, they returned to Whittier,
then moved to Newport Beach. Firoozeh then attended UC Berkeley
where she met and married a Frenchman.
Firoozeh grew up listening
to her father, a former Fulbright Scholar, recount the many
colorful stories of his life in both Iran and America. In 2001,
with no prior writing experience, Firoozeh decided to write
her stories as a gift for her two children. Funny
in Farsi was on the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles
Times bestseller lists and was a finalist for the PEN/USA award
in 2004 and a finalist in 2005 for an Audie Award for best audio
book. (She lost to Bob Dylan.) She was also a finalist for the
prestigious Thurber Prize for American Humor (she lost to Jon
Stewart), and is the first Middle Eastern woman ever to be considered
for this honor.
Critics and readers of
all ages have loved her stories. Jimmy Carter called Funny
in Farsi “A humorous and introspective chronicle of
a life filled with love—of family, country and heritage.”
Orange County Reads One
Book selected Funny
in Farsi as its book of the year for 2004, as did the city
of Whittier in 2005 and the cities of Cape Ann, MA and Palo
Alto, CA in 2006. Funny
in Farsi is now on the California Recommended Reading List
and is used in many junior high, high schools, and universities.
Her commentaries have been broadcast on NPR and published in
the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, San
Francisco Chronicle Magazine, and Lifetime Magazine.
In April 2005, Firoozeh’s
one-woman show, “Laughing Without an Accent” opened
in Northern California to sold out audiences and ran at Theatreworks
in Mountain View, California in 2006.
For the past three years,
Firoozeh has traveled the country reminding us that our commonalities
far outweigh our differences…and doing so with humor.
She has spoken in conferences, schools, churches, Jewish Temples
and Islamic centers. Her travels have taken her from the East
Coast to the West Coast, from Harvard University to UCLA. Everywhere
she has gone, audiences have embraced her message of shared
humanity and invited her back for more.
Firoozeh Dumas’s
next book, entitled Laughing
without an Accent, is due to be published in May 2008.
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