Seyed Ali Salehi, born in Marqab in south-west Iran in 1955, published his first works in local newspapers and small literary gatherings in the early 1970s. In 1975, at the age of nineteen, he was awarded the Forough literary prize. Salehi was chairman of the Writers' Union in Iran from 2001 to 2003 and was repeatedly interrogated because of his literary and political protests. He was editor of various literary magazines, including the literary magazine Sokhan, which has been banned from publication since 2000, and editor of the magazine Literarischer Standard, which was banned after the first issue. Seyed Ali Salehi is one of Iran's most important contemporary poets. He lives in Tehran.