Born and raised in Tehran, Parsipur received her B.A. in sociology from Tehran University in 1973 and studied Chinese language and civilization at the Sorbonne from 1976 to 1980. Her first book was Tupak-e Qermez (The Little Red Ball, 1969). As of the late 1980s, Parsipur received considerable attention in Tehran literary circles, with the publication of several of her stories and a lengthy interview in “Donya-ye Sokhanmagazine”. Her second novel was Touba va ma’na-ye Shab (Touba and the Meaning of Night, 1989), which she wrote after spending four years and seven months in prison. In 1990, she published a short novel, again consisting of connected stories, called Zanan Bedun-e Mardan (Women without Men), which she had finished in the late 1970s. The Iranian government banned Women without Men in the mid-1990s and put pressure on the author to desist from such writing. Early in 1990, Parsipur finished her fourth novel, a 450-page story of a female Don Quixote called Aql-e abi’rang (Blue-colored Reason), which remained unavailable as of early 1992. In 1994, she came to the United States and wrote Prison Memoir, her story of her time in prison. In 1996 she wrote her fifth novel Shiva, a science fiction novel. In 1999 she published her sixth novel, Maajerahaaye Saadeh Va Kuchake Ruhe Deraxat (The Plain and Small Adventures of the Spirit of the Tree). In 2002, she published her seventh novel, Bar Baale Baad Neshastan (On the wings of Wind).
Shahrnush Parsipur currently resides in the United States. She is the recipient of the first International Writers Project Fellowship from the Program in Creative Writing and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.
