Born in Iran in 1946, Shahrnush Parsipur began her career as a fiction writer and producer at Iranian National Television and Radio. She was imprisoned for nearly five years by the religious government without being formally charged. Shortly after her release, she published Women Without Men. While still banned in Iran, the novel became an underground bestseller there. Parsipur is also the author of Touba and the Meaning of Night and Kissing The Sword: A Prison Memoir (forthcoming from Feminist Press), among many other books, and now lives in exile in Northern California.