Sheema Kalbasi

Sheema Kalbasi (, born 20 November 1972 in Tehran, Iran is an award winning poet and producer.

Biography
Kalbasi is the founder and president of Reel Content, a film production and publishing company. She is the director and the co-director of several literary projects including the Other Voices International project. She has published two books of poetry and two anthologies of poems. Her poems have been anthologized and translated into eighteen languages to date. Kalbasi's work is distinguished by her passionate defense of ethnic and religious minorities' rights. Her poetry have been compared to that of Bertolt Brecht and Lauro de Bosis. She has done voluntary teaching and tutoring of Baha'i refugee children as well as Iraqi Kurdish children, and disadvantaged Pakistani children in Pakistan. In 2009 she signed an open letter of apology posted to Iranian.com along with 266 other Iranian academics, writers, artists, journalists about the Persecution of Bahá'ís.

Kalbasi has worked for the United Nations and the Center for non Afghan Refugees in Pakistan, and in Denmark. She lives near Washington, D.C..

She has translated poems by the Danish poet Jens Fink-Jensen into English and Persian.

Awards

 * Humanitarian work, Center for non-Afghan Refugees, Islamabad, Pakistan, 1990.

Books


 * Echoes in Exile, Indie Excellence Winner.
 * Echoes in Exile, Best Books Award Finalist, USA Book News.

Nominations

 * Echoes in Exile, Collection, Annual Library of Virginia Literary Award, 2008.
 * Echoes in Exile, Pushcart Prize, 2008.
 * Seven Valleys of Love, The PEN Award for Poetry In Translation, 2008.
 * Seven Valleys of Love, Anisfield-wolf Book Award, 2008.

Poetry

 * Sangsar (The Stoning). Sinbad Publishing, 2005.
 * Echoes in Exile (Phoenix Rising Arts Publishing, 2006)

Edited

 * Poetry of Iranian Women (Editor, Reelcontent Publishing, 2008. Poetry of Iranian Women,


 * Valleys of Love, a bilingual anthology of women poets from Middle Ages Persia to present day Iran'' (Translator, Editor, Phoenix Rising Arts Publishing, 2008)