User:Morteza Bemani/Akram Pedramnia

Akram Pedramnia (Persian: اکرم پدرام ‏نیا) (February 17, 1969) is an Iranian-Canadian writer, translator, Joycean scholar, researcher, activist, and medical doctor. She has written, researched, and translated many English novels and political articles. She resides in Canada since 1998 when she had emigrated from Iran.

Biography
Born and raised to a working class family in Kashan, Pedramnia studied English Literacy at the University of Tehran. She was admitted then to Iran University of Medical Sciences and graduated as a Physician in 1997. In Canada she obtained a Health Informatics degree from McMaster University.

She is currently writing and translating about a variety of matters, including novels, literature critics, and social issues. Pedramnia has also frequently written for international Iranian newspapers and websites.

Books
She is the author of three novels in the Persian language on themes which reveal underlying social issues in Iran.

She has also translated into Persian texts by various authors such as Colm Tóibín, E.L. Doctorow, Joan London (Gilgamesh), Noam Chomsky (Failed States), Richard B. wright (Clara Callan), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tender is the night) Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) and James Joyce (Ulysses).

Activism on Censorship
Akram Pedramnia is best known for her work in challenging and criticizing Iranian censorship opposing freedom of speech and expression of writers and artists. In 2013 she translated Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita in to Persian. The book was published in Afghanistan, another Persian language speaking nation and Iran’s neighbouring county by a Kabul based publisher named Zaryab Publication. Soon after Lolita found its way to the Iranian underground market. In response, the Iranian Minister of cultural and Islamic Guidance declared that Pedramnia’s translation is banned and has been disseminated illegally. The book was later even published in a different format as samizdat inside Iran.

Due to the same argument her recent work, the translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses another forbidden book, has been planned for publication in six volumes by Nogaam Press, a Persian-language publisher based in London, England which aims to publish Persian writing and translation beyond the censorship concerns faced inside the country. The first volume was released on April 2019.

An article in the The Globe and mail describes her as “one of the strongest-willed translators active today. Confronting pernicious state-sponsored censorship, watching as dubious publishers eight time zones away put her work into print without permission or payment.”

The Italian newspaper IL FOGLIO writes: "This (Lolita) is my translation sold on the streets of Tehran," says Akram Pedramnia at this week's Boston Globe. "The book is forbidden, but people send me these photographs, hiding their faces, of course. And they publish these images on social platforms, showing smuggling".

Another German language newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung says: “Her translations are distributed as pirated or over the Internet without her earning a cent - but that does not bother Akram Pedramnia. She is even pleased. Thanks to her, Iranian readers can read "Lolita" or "Tender is the Night".

Awards
Scholarship: James Joyce Foundation Zurich 2019

Translation Grant: Literature Ireland for Persian translation of Ulysses

Essays and Lectures

James Joyce Symposium Antwerp 2018 (Lecture)

University College Dublin Summer 2018 (Lecture) James Joyce Foundation Zurich 2019 (Lecture)

James Joyce Symposium Mexico City 2019 (Lecture)

Dublin James Joyce Journal (Essay) 2017

Freie Universität Berlin Bulletin (Essay) 2019