Siavash Saadlou, MFA 2025
The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Siavash Saadlou, MFA. Siavash’s graduate thesis is a collection of stories entitled Think of the Sea.
Born and raised in Iran, Siavash is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer and literary translator whose piece, “My Mom Told Me,” was selected as a Notable Essay by Robert Atwan for the 2023 Best American Essays series. His short stories, essays, and works of translation have appeared in Ploughshares, Massachusetts Review, and Southeast Review, among many other journals. Siavash is the winner of the 2024 McNally Robinson Booksellers Creative Nonfiction Prize, the 2024 Susan Atefat Creative Nonfiction Prize, the 2023 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize, and the 55th Cole Swensen Prize for Translation. He is currently editing his debut novel.
Siavash’s story collection explores émigré life, sexual identity, patriarchy, and displacement through Iranian and diasporic experiences. In the title story, an unnamed narrator—a middle-aged cab driver—makes extra money by visiting graves on behalf of Iranian expats unable to return home for political reasons. In “The Winning Goal,” a woman fearing the government’s draconian anti-abortion laws faces the insidious complications of terminating her pregnancy on her own. “A Deep Breath” follows Sima, a girl suffering from pica, who conspires with her unworldly boyfriend to murder her despotic dad. The collection includes eight stories in total.
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