McMaster's Department of English & Cultural Studies is pleased to welcome fiction writer Nooshin Salari as our first International Writer-in-Residence.

Nooshin Salari was born in Tabriz, Iran. She immigrated to Canada in 1992 and attended the University of Saskatchewan where obtained her degree in Pharmacy. Salari began writing short stories as a teenager in Tehran, Iran. Her first story, “School Library”, appeared in 1980 in Negeen magazine. Since then, her stories have appeared in different literary magazines in Iran including The World of Words and in various volumes of the Anthology of Short Stories by Iranian and World Writers (selected by Safdar Taghizadeh), as well as a collection of short stories by contemporary Iranian female writers called At the Threshold of a Cold Season (selected by Toraj Rahnama and Susan Gaveri).

Nooshin Salari's first collection of short stories, The End of the Apple Tree, was published by Movarid Press in Tehran in 2004. She has completed a second collection of short stories and is currently working on her first novel. The two collections of short stories are in translation.

McMaster's international writer-in-residence is the most recent of several positions established at Canadian universities through the efforts of PEN Canada. PEN Canada, an association of writers and supporters formed in 1926 to defend freedom of expression and raise awareness of that right, is the current chair of the International PEN Writers in Exile Network.

The Writers in Exile Network was developed specifically to expand the network of placements in academic institutions. This program has grown out of a commitment to understand better the needs of exiled writers living in Canada and to create opportunities to improve their access to a professional career. PEN Canada is one of 140 centres of International PEN in 99 countries, and uses the power of the word to assist writers around the world persecuted or exiled for the expression of their thoughts.

Salari will be on campus Tuesdays and Thursdays from February through to April, 2006. She is available to make class visits and to meet with members of the McMaster and Hamilton communities to discuss matters of immigration and exile, translation of international writers' works, and the current state of Iranian writing.

The Faculy of Humanities would like to invite members of the community to a reception to welcome Nooshin Salari to campus. The reception, a great opportunity to meet Salari and representatives of PEN Canada, will be held in the West Room of the University Club on March 2, at 3:30 p.m.

Please call the English department at 905-525-9140, ext. 24491 to contact Salari.