Author Talk: Mojdeh Bahar

Mojdeh Bahar will be in store to discuss her newest work of translation, The Dusk of Exile: Poems of Longing and Light by Jila Mossaed. 

Mojdeh has a deep interest in world literature including Persian poetry. Her love of literature has lead her to translating a selection of Mohammad Reza Shafi’i Kadkani’s nature poetry, Milkvetch and Violets (Mage, 2021); Song of the Ground Jay: Poems by Iranian Women, 1960-2022, (Mage, 2023), poems by 52 Iranian women poets; and the expanded edition, Song of the Ground Jay, Expanded Edition (Gordyeh Publishers, 2023), which includes work from 104 contemporary Iranian women poets; Taraneh Habib’s poems, In the Mirror: Poems and Collages, (Gordyeh Publishers, 2023); and Silence and Lost Words (Mage, 2025), a selection of Rouhangiz Karachi’s poetry. Her translations have also appeared in Lyrikline and Stepaway, Loch Raven Review, and Women, Life, Freedom, an anthology by Guernica Editions (2025).

Mojdeh will be joined by Dagwood Leach, a poet and translator based in Baltimore, MD. He holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU’s Writers Workshop in Paris and an MA in Russian Translation from Columbia University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Maryland Bards Poetry Review, Sargasso, The Sine Qua Non, and Meridian, and his haiku, under the name Dagwood Leach, appear in Modern Haiku, Bottle Rockets, and Kingfisher.  Leach was a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s 2024 Nature & Place Prize, MQR’s 2025 Laurence Goldstein Prize in poetry, and was a participant in the Tupelo Press 30/30 project for November 2025. 

Join us for a compelling afternoon about poetry, translation, and the craft of writing.