Skip to main content
Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Contributor

Sholeh Wolpé

A portrait of translator Sholeh Wolpé
Photo copyright © Bonnie Perkinson
Contributor

Sholeh Wolpé

Sholeh Wolpé was born in Iran and has lived in Trinidad, the UK, and the United States. About her poems, the Poetry Foundation writes, “Wolpé’s concise, unflinching, and often wry free verse explores violence, culture, and gender.” She is the 2018 inaugural author in residence at UCLA and a recipient of the 2014 PEN/Heim, the 2013 Midwest Book Award, and the 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation prize, among others. Her publications include four collections of poetry, two plays, three books of translations, and three anthologies. Wolpé’s modern translation of The Conference of the Birds (W. W. Norton) by the twelfth-century Iranian mystic poet Attar has been hailed by Reza Aslan as “timeless as the masterpiece itself.” She has taught poetry and literary translation at UCLA and University of Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program. Follow her on Twitter @Sholeh_Wolpe. 

Articles by Sholeh Wolpé

The Poem
By Mohsen Emadi
the poem is riding a bicycle; / trembling and in haste.
Translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé
Learn
Can Literature Save the World? On Translating Attar’s “The Conference of the Birds”
By Sholeh Wolpé
Sholeh Wolpé’s translation of Attar’s The Conference of the Birds was published in March 2017 by W. W. Norton & Co. Sholeh will be discussing the book this Thursday, April…
Connection
By Forugh Farrokhzad
I sensed my skin crack from love’s dilating joy.
Translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé
Learn
I Pity the Garden
By Forugh Farrokhzad
The schoolchildren fill their backpacks / with tiny bombs.
Translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé
Learn