Author Series: The Heartbeat of Iran

Womens Foreign Policy Group

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Author Series: The Heartbeat of Iran

Tuesday, April 20, 2021, 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM EDT

Category: Events

As the US administration reengages in negotiations with Iran, it is even more critical that we look beyond the fiery rhetoric of politicians and attempt to understand the people and culture of Iran. The Heartbeat of Iran captures the reality of everyday life in Iran through in-depth reporting and textured portraits of regular Iranians. Join us for a conversation with author and journalist Tara Kangarlou and New York Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi on Kangarlou's forthcoming book, the impact of people-to-people diplomacy, and her experiences covering the region.

Tara Kangarlou is an award-winning journalist who has reported, written, and produced breaking news, investigative pieces, and broadcast stories for NBC, CNN, CNN International and Al Jazeera America. Her writing and reporting has also appeared in TIME, Vanity Fair, Huffington Post, and Al Monitor. She previously served as a fellow at the East West Institute, is a contributor to Al Jazeera, and a frequent commentator on various news outlets. In 2015, she led Al Jazeera America's team with unprecedented access to report from inside Iran during the nuclear negotiations. In recent years, she has reported extensively from the Syrian border regions of Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan covering issues that impact Syrian refugees, host countries, and the Middle East at large. In 2016, she founded Art of Hope, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the psychosocial and mental health needs of refugees in Lebanon. Tara was born and raised in Tehran and is fully bilingual in English and Farsi.

Farnaz Fassihi is a reporter for The New York Times based in New York. Previously she was a senior writer and war correspondent for the Wall Street Journal based in the Middle East. Fassihi has covered wars and uprisings across the Middle East, including in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. She served as the Journal’s Baghdad bureau chief (2003-2006) and deputy bureau chief for Middle East and Africa based in Beirut overseeing the newspaper's coverage and a team of reporters. From 2015-2019, she was part of the paper's Washington Bureau covering diplomacy and US foreign policy. She has won over a dozen national awards for Iran coverage and was a lead reporter in the Journal's award winning Censorship Inc. investigative series on how authoritarian regimes use technology for censorship and crackdowns. Fassihi is also the author of “Waiting for an Ordinary Day”, a memoir of her four years covering the Iraq war.