Iranian poet Pegah Ahmadi was born in Tehran in 1974 and is known as a trail-blazing contemporary Iranian poet. Her already-published works were removed from circulation by the government, because of her critiques of the role of the Islamic religion in the history of cruelty to women and suppression of free expression in Iran. She was then banned from further publication and fired from her job. In 2009, following her involvement with the Green Movement demonstrations, she was threatened with imprisonment, and subsequently she left Iran with the assistance of the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN). She is now in residence at Brown University.
On May 5th, Pegah Ahmadi read at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh as a part of the event Exiled Voices of Iran
