Moniru Ravanipur was born in 1952 into a large family in Jofreh, a small village in Southern Iran.. A prolific writer of fiction, she is one of the most radical and stylistically revolutionary voices in Persian literature today. The Iranian government has reacted against her controversial work by banning reproductions since 2006. Her boldness, subversiveness, and anti-orthodoxy emanates not from her political views by from her narrative experimentation, her unsentimental exploration of mental instability, and her unrelenting fascination with spirits, ogres, and demons. In addition to her novels and short story collections, Ravanupur has written a compilation of southern Iranian legends and beliefs that was published in 1989. She has also compiled childrens stories based off her grandmothers stories from her youth. Her books have been banned in Iran since 2006. Rebecca Joubin is an Iranian-American scholar who received her PhD from the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department at Columbia University in 2004. She lived in Damascus where she conducted research on Syrian and Iraqi culture before starting as Assistant Professor and Chair of Arab Studies at Davidson College during the fall of 2009. Her articles in Arabic and English have been published in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Arab Studies Journal, Radical Society, The Cairo Times, al-Kifa al-Arabi, and al-Mada. She teaches elementary, intermediate, as well as advanced Arabic courses on Syrian literature, drama, and film, with an emphasis on gender and politics. She has also teaches an independent study on Iranian literature and art. This is her third book.