Nastaran Makaremi

Biography

Nastaran Makaremi is an Iranian author and poet born in 1978 in Abadan, Iran. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (2001) and taught painting, design and art history at universities in Tehran and Isfahan (2001-2009). She later worked as a journalist and literary critic (2010-2014) and has directed several documentaries since 2020.

She is the author of 5 novels - Ordibehest Deadlock (2015), Soirée After the Funeral (2017), Total (2020), and Distress Stages (2024, an underground publication without state censorship) as well as the young adult novel Bergamot of Sun (2017). Her short stories collection includes No One is Good (2014) and Pink Dust (2018), and she has published the poetry collection Hell Candy, among others.
Makaremi's novels have received worldwide recognition, including winning the South Story Literary Award (2016) and the Gamalzadeh Literary Award (2020). She was one of the finalists for the Bushehr and Mehregan & Ma Literary Prizes. Her work “Sabroo” was selected for the 2021 International Human Rights Artists Festival.

Makaremi is very involved in Iran's literary community and was a jury member for the Gamalzadeh Literary Award. She has already organized campaigns for the liberation of imprisoned writers and supports the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. Since 2022 she has been part of the “Continue Writing” program, where several of her works have been translated and published in German. In 2025 she moved to Berlin and received fellowships from the Berlin Artists Program of the DAAD and Weltoffenes Berlin.