Date: July 31, 2024
Event Time: 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Location: Sufi Mediterranean Restaurant - 5915 Balboa Ave, SD, CA 92111
Short presentation: Music by Milad & Maryam Hosseini and Mike Jones.
Topic: An evening of the classical and folk music of Iran, Presented by UCSD music students
Main Presenter: Ellen Estilai
Topic: "Readings from Exit Prohibited: a Memoir"
Main Presentation: After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Ellen Estilai and her family attempt to leave Tehran, their home of nine years. At the airport, her Iranian husband is inexplicably prevented from leaving. As he confronts hostile colleagues and the Islamic Republic’s opaque bureaucracy, Estilai examines their lives, trying to understand what might have brought them to this point. Exit Prohibited is a story of a complex Iran, at once welcoming and hostile, progressive and traditional, enamored of and distrustful of the West—an Iran as complex as Estilai’s relationship to it.
About Ellen Estilai: She' the author of Exit Prohibited, a memoir of Iran, and The Museum of Missing Things, a chapbook of poetry and prose. She earned a BA in Art from the University of California, Davis, and an MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Tehran. She has spent much of her career collaborating with artists, writers, and agencies to strengthen communities through the arts. She has taught language, literature and writing in universities in Iran and California. Her essays, short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Because Ellen and her husband have been immigrants in each other’s countries, her writing frequently explores the joys and tribulations of the immigrant experience.
She lives in Riverside, California.
Language: English
