Farshad Sonboldel

Middle East Studies Librarian and Area Studies Collection Strategist

Bio

Farshad Sonboldel is the Middle East Studies Librarian and Area Studies Collection Strategist at UCSB. He holds a Ph.D. in Modern Languages (Modern Persian literature) from the University of St. Andrews, UK. He also holds a Master’s and a Bachelor’s Degree in Persian Language and Literature from the University of Tehran. Farshad is a Persian poet and literary critic. He has published four books in Persian, two selections of his poems titled Metropolis (2015) and She’r-e Boland-e Sharayet (2019), a research monograph, Gozaresh-e Nahib-e Jonbesh-e Adabi-e Shahin: Tondar Kia (2016) on the works of an avant-garde Persian poet in the first half of the twentieth century, and an edited volume about the current trends of the literary criticism in Persian literature entitled Naqd-e Irad: naqd-e adabi-e farsi dar do su-ye marz'ha (2020). Farshad has won the Ahmad Shamlou Poetry Award 2020 for his second poetry book. His work had also been selected as the best collection of poetry in the National Bushehr Poetry Award in 2018. He has also published several English articles and research papers on modern Persian literature in academic journals and edited volumes. Farshad has taught Persian language and literature and has worked as a librarian and a researcher in various divisions of the University of St Andrews and the University of Tehran since 2015. His forthcoming book is titled The politics of poetic experimentation: reimaging the history of alternative poetic movements in Iran (1800-1960). He is the Book Review Editor for the MELA notes the journal of the Middle East Librarians Association.