Dina Nayeri’s critically acclaimed books, essays, and stories are published in 20+ countries and taught in schools across Europe and the US. Who Gets Believed? (2023) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In reviewing it, The Guardian called her “a master storyteller of the refugee experience.” The Ungrateful Refugee (2019) was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and won Germany’s Geschwister Scholl Preis. The Observer called it “a work of astonishing, insistent importance.” A fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris and winner of a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant and the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, Dina’s essays and stories have been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Granta, Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and many other publications. She’s a newcomer to playwriting but her plays have been shortlisted for the Paines Plough Women’s prize and Soho Theatre’s Verity Bargate award. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, Harvard Business School, and Princeton and is now a Reader at the University of St Andrews.
Photo Credit: Anna Leader