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Recent Publishing History:
BOOKS:
One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature (University of Arkansas Press, Nov. 2010) co-edited by Zohra Saed and Sahar Muradi
“Afghan American Writing ‘One Story, Thirty Stories'” by Bruce Weber, PRI, Feb 4, 2011.
Review Here in Book Dragon, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program
Comprised of poems, short fiction, essays, excerpts from two blogs, and rich appendices (including a “Themes Index” and “Chronology of Afghan American History” – bet you didn’t know that dance legend Robert Joffrey was hapa Afghan American, or that an Afghan American invented the cooking method that became “Minute Rice”!), Story gathers the work of one of America’s newest ethnic groups. Afghan Americans number “just several hundred thousand people distributed across the country in scattered pockets, a community born of disaster halfway around the planet: in the last decades of the twentieth century, a revolution, an invasion from the north, a civil war, and finally a descent into chaos, utter chaos, which drove millions of refugees out of Afghanistan,” explains Mir Tamim Ansary in his “Foreword.”
Gulf News “Afghan American Authors Raise Awareness” November, 2010. Sharjah UAE.
CHAPBOOKS:
Woman. Hand/Pen.Zohra Saed [Poetry Chaplet]. Belladonna Collective, 2017.
Langston Hughes in Turkestan: Poems, Photos, and Notebooks from 1932-1933 Edited by Zohra Saed. Lost and Found CUNY Poetic Documents Initiative. Center for Humanities, CUNY Graduate Center.
In 1932, along with a group of African American activists and writers including novelist Dorothy West, Langston Hughes journeyed to the Soviet Union. Veering off from the “official” trip, Hughes met Arthur Koestler before venturing on to an extended journey through the newly formed Soviet republics of Central Asia. While Hughes’ readers may be familiar with his A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia, this chapbook makes available previously unpublished material drawn from Hughes’ notebooks, photographs, and collaborative translation projects with Uzbek poets. Just as his own work is being translated into Uzbek, Hughes—ever the participant—collaborates with his peer poets in the region to produce texts published in this collection for the first time. Finally, Hughes’ acuity of vision extends to his photographs appearing here, scenes of workers in the cotton fields of Central Asia that stand in stark contrast to official depictions of the time. Complementing The Selected Letters of Langston Hughes (2015) and a reprint of the 1926 edition of The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes: Poems, Photos & Notebooks from Turkestan reveals yet another aspect of the ever-expanding universe of one of the greatest American writers.
Selected Archives:
- Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, New York, NY
Publisher’s Weekly Review Here
Saed provides an informative foreword explaining literary politics in Soviet Central Asia under Stalin, and a moving afterword about her family’s flight from Uzbekistan. Hughes’s clipped notes on his travels reveal his views of “minority” life in non-Russian Soviet states, and though he was determined to meet writers and find things out for himself, he did not always see past the Communist Party line: “So rapidly are Uzbeks and Russians mixing,” he wrote in Tashkent, “that in 15 years, one probably can’t tell who is who.” The journals also show—with Saed’s help—the region’s complicated language politics.
Misspelled Cities/Falsch Geschriebene Stadte: Notebook 105, by Sahar Muradi and Zohra Saed. Poetry Chapbook for Documenta 13. (Kassel, Germany). Bilingual: English/German. (2012)
ESSAYS:
“Samsa on Sheepshead Bay: Central Asian Foodprints in Southern Brooklyn,” Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader Edited by Robert Ku, Anita Mannur and Martin Manalansan (NYU Press: 2013).
“When I Thought I was Arab but Turned out to be Chinese” and “Interviews with Afghan American Artists and Writers” THE ASIAN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW: SPECIAL ISSUE MIXED RACE IN A BOX.
“An Historic Survey of the Educational System in Afghanistan,” International Education: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Issues and Systems Ed. Daniel Ness and Chia-ling Lin. M.E. Sharpe (November, 2012).
Testimonies. Asian American Literary Review’s Special Issue Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of September 11. Vol. 2 Issue 1.5, 2011. The Asian American Literary Review. University of Maryland.
“Gazelle Samizay: Claustrophobic Spaces, the Art of Tucking Away and Radical Self Making” Zohra Saed, (March 1, 2011) Contemporary Practices vol. VII (Dubai, UAE).
POETRY/PROSE:
Forthcoming 2019. “Jalalabad Will Never Be Jbad” The Massachusetts Review. Asian American Special Issue Editors Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis and Cathy Schlund-Vials.
Aug. 2012 “Kandahar” Split This Rock Poem of the Week. www.splitthisrock.org
2011 Poetry. Seven Leaves, One Autumn: Seven International Women’s Poetry, Sukrita Singh, Savita Paul Kumar. (Rajkamal Publishing House: New Delhi, India). An anthology of seven international poets.
INTERVIEWS:
“Upsetting Brooklyn” Eleanor J. Bader, The Brooklyn Rail. March 2011. http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/03/local/upsetting-brooklyn
“Afghan American writing ‘One Story, Thirty Stories'” Interview with Bruce Wallace PRI’s The World, (WNYC Radio, NY). February 4, 2011 http://www.theworld.org/2011/02/afghan-american-one-story-thirty-stories/
“Zohra Saed and Sedika Mojadidi read from One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Afghan-American American Literature (University of Arkansas Press)” Interview with Leonard Schwartz on Cross Cultural Poetics, KAOS-FM at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. January, 2011. http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/groups/XCP/XCP_227_Saed_Mojadidi_2-13-11.mp3
“Afghan Americans: Three Poets, Two Editors” Levantine Review, The Levantine Center. Los Angeles, CA. January 4, 2011. http://www.levantinecenter.org/arts/cultures/central-asia/afghan/afghan-americans-three-poets-two-editors
“South Asian Journalist Association Webcast: One Story, Thirty Stories” Interview with Sree Sreenivasan. NY, NY. January 14, 2011. http://www.sajaforum.org/2011/01/books-webcast-one-story-thirty-stories-afghan-american-anthology.html
