Grew up on the California coast, off to college at Berkeley, grad school in Chicago. Since then teaching at Emory and University of Chicago - Persian literature, Arabic literature, Iranian cinema, Islamic civilization, Sufism, Shi`i and Baha'i Studies, Translation History, etc. I translate fiction and poetry, including Rumi (Rumi: Swallowing the Sun, 2008), modern short stories (In a Voice of Their Own: A Collection of Stories by Iranian Women Written Since the Revolution of 1979, with Farzin Yazdanfar [Mazda Publishers, 1996]), the novella Masumeh of Shiraz by Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh ( http://www.persian-literature.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/masumeh-1.pdf ), and the novel by the Armenian-Iranian author, Zoya Pirzad, The Things We Left Unsaid (Oneworld, 2012). My study, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (Oxford: Oneworld) received the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies publication award (British-Kuwaiti Friendship award) for the best book published in the United Kingdom in the field of Middle Eastern Studies in 2000 (translations have been published in Iran, Turkey, Denmark and in Syria). An updated English edition was published in 2007 to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the poet's birth, along with a collection of literary translations of Rumi's poetry, Rumi: Swallowing the Sun (Oneworld, 2008). You can see my 8-part short introduction to Rumi and his Masnavi on the Guardian's website: ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/30/rumi-masnavi-muslim-poetry ). My work on Rumi has appeared in Persian translation in Iran, and also in the journal Iran Nameh ( http://fis-iran.org/fa/irannameh/volxxiv/rumi-quest ) including a special issue of the journal dedicated to the poet featuring major scholars ( http://fis-iran.org/fa/irannameh/volxxv/1-2rumi ). I've also written articles about classical Persian literature and sufism in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, Encyclopedia of the Modern Muslim World, Encyclopedia of the Qur'ān, and the Encyclopedia of Religion and in various book chapters and volumes. I worked together with Heshmat Moayyad to translate and annotate a hagiographical account of a popular Sufi saint of 12th century Khorasan, The Colossal Elephant and His Spiritual Feats: Shaykh Ahmad-e Jām (Mazda, 2004). And with Sunil Sharma, I edited The Necklace of the Pleiades: Studies in Persian Literature and Culture (Amsterdam: Leiden University Press, 2010). I edited a special issue of the journal of Iranian Studies (vol. 48, #3 2015) on Ferdowsi and his Shahnameh as World Literature ( http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cist20/48/3#.VW_oy0YYGvk )