This is a list of my most important nonsuccesses:

In 2002, I wasn’t able to enter film school.

In 2004, I wasn’t able to publish my first short story collection – due to, of course, non-literary reasons which are specific to our country!

I have had other successes and failures as well.

I have received six domestic awards for short story writing. I have written several plays and screenplays, and made three short films. Twice I had the experience of directing a theatrical production, and although these were amateur endeavors for the most part, I consider them successes. I have also written a long, experimental screenplay which is currently being turned into a film in an independent context outside of the usual limitations of Iranian cinema. Likewise, I have another animated screenplay which is being produced in a non-independent context – for television.

My stories have been published several times in domestic magazines. I will be publishing my first short story collection, entitled A Disordered Collection (majmu’e-ye bi-nazm), shortly. I’m currently working on a novel which I might name Accidental Deaths (morde-haye ettefaqi).

Right now I work on scripts for radio, and, very occasionally, for television. This is my occupation but I love writing fiction more than any other work, and in my opinion, I know it better than any other work.

I graduated from Tehran University of Art with a degree in publishing and will continue my studies at the graduate level, starting this fall, in the field of dramatic literature.

Lukman Derky was born in Darbasiya in Northern Syria in 1966. He lived between Darbasiya, Aleppo and Damascus, where he now resides. Derky’s artistic trajectory began in the literary circle of Aleppo University in the 1980s, and he has since become a well-known figure in Syrian journalism, poetry and theater. Derky was among the founders of two publications, Alif Magazine (early 1990s) and al-Dumery (2001), a satirical newpaper. He writes a daily column, “al-Zaawiya” (The Corner) in the Syrian newspaper Beleduna (Our Country). He has worked in theater, cinema and television as writer, actor and director. He is also the founder and director of “Bayt al-Qasid” (House of Poetry), where he hosts evenings of world poetry every Monday night at Bar Dimashq.

“Taxi Diaries,” by Naser Ghiasi, is a short story cycle narrated by an Iranian immigrant in Germany, who, like Ghiasi himself, drives a Berlin taxi to make a living while moonlighting his true passion: literature. Each chapter tells the tale of a single taxi fare, varying in length only as much as a taxi ride can. In between the tragic-comic travails of the passengers, who variously treat the driver as a therapist, captive audience, racially-profiled target of anti-immigration sentiments, or an object of exotifying, or simply innocent, curiosity, there gradually emerges a melancholy metanarrative of a soul struggling to find a meaningful human connection in a lonely, alien metropole.

Ghiasi, like his alter ego, was born in the province of Gilan in northern Iran, and has lived in Germany for the bulk of his adult life. In addition to his experience behind the wheel of a Berlin cab, Ghiasi has worked as a translator, publishing several Persian translations of German short stories, including many of Kafka’s previously unpublished (in Persian) works. “Taxi Diaries” and its sequel, “More Taxi Diaries,” are told in a simple, straightforward, dialogue-dominated prose that suits their theme and subject matter well. Ghiasi’s other works, which can be found on his website and in his first published collection, “Dance on the roofbeams of anxiety,” exhibit diversity in a variety of different styles. Experimentation with language and form makes Ghiasi’s an exciting and surprising oeuvre.

Ghiasi’s website (http://naserghiasi.com/) is well-known in the Persian blogosphere for both its literary and critical context.