Niloufar Talebi

CREATOR, AUTHOR, STORYTELLER, CONSULTANT, PUBLIC SPEAKER, EDUCATOR, PRODUCER, TRANSLATOR

Niloufar Talebi is a genre-defying creative—an author, multidisciplinary storyteller, educator, and maverick producer whose work spans literature, opera, performance, and cultural translation. Her practice is rooted in dismantling narratives and reinvention, transforming lived experience and language into art that stirs and liberates.

At the Stanford Continuing Studies, she teaches courses in Creativity and Creative Writing, and has previously taught at Hunter College and Plymouth State University. 

Her memoir, Self-Portrait in Bloom (2019), was praised as “A hybrid wonder” (The Rumpus) and called “A brutally honest memoir of a life built by words, destroyed by words, rebuilt by words” by New York Times bestselling author Firoozeh Dumas. It breaks with the memoir form and presents a portrait of the Nobel-Prize nominated Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou and his poetry in her award-winning translation.

Her memoir inspired the critically acclaimed opera Abraham in Flames (world premiere May 9-12, 2019), which she produced, and conceived in collaboration with composer Aleksandra Vrebalov and director Roy Rallo, and which is part of a suite of projects inspired by and celebrating the life and work of Ahmad Shamlou.

Niloufar’s TEDxBerkeley talk (March 9, 2019), “On Making Beauty After Agony,” speaks to the reinvention behind her major works. 

Niloufar’s expansive projects as writer, translator, librettist, creator, director, curator, performer, presenter, and producer include Belonging, ICARUS/RISE, The Persian Rite of Spring, and numerous interdisciplinary performances and cultural initiatives.

Niloufar served as a juror for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the San Francisco Arts Commission artist grant, Opera America, and the 2021 Pen Translation Prize.

In 2004, Niloufar founded The Translation Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing Iranian-inspired projects to the world in literary and cultural translation, through which she envisioned, created, and produced several events, art works, and other projects. Since 2010, she has continued that work under the auspices of Niloufar Talebi Projects.

Niloufar’s honors and fellowships include: the James Irvine Foundation, Walter and Elise Haas Foundation, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Creative Work Fund, Zellerbach Foundation, Christensen Fund, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, IntersectSF, New Music USA, Sam Mazza Foundation, PARSA Community Foundation, Unique Zan Foundation, Farhang Foundation, and Anonymous, and 5 translation awards: PEN American Center/New York State Council on the Arts anthology prize, the International Center for Writing and Translation award, the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, and an American Literary Translators Association fellowship, and her translations of Ahmad Shamlou’s poetry were selected for a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellow (2015 and 2024).

Niloufar was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar 2021-2022 to the country of Georgia, hosted by Ilia State University. She presented at the Tbilisi International Festival of Literature, the Tbilisi International Book Festival, and the Writers House of Georgia.