by AnnSheybani | Nov 10, 2025 | Life, Writing
My friend and I were seated together at a conference. I could practically feel the sparks coming off her, so consumed was she by the desire to be plucked from the crowd and brought onstage for an exercise. Leaning forward, she gripped the chair-back in front of her,...
by AnnSheybani | Nov 3, 2025 | Life, Writing
In 2010, Marina Abramović did something insane.For seventy-five days straight, she sat in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Six days a week. Nearly eight hours a day. No breaks. No food. No water. She didn’t speak. Didn’t move. She...
by AnnSheybani | Oct 27, 2025 | Reading, Writing, writing lessons
As a chemistry major who really shouldn’t have been a chemistry major for a whole host of reasons, I nearly lost my mind with physical chemistry. One exercise that I found particularly punishing was proving “proofs” for quantum theorems. I mean, how... by AnnSheybani | Oct 19, 2025 | Reading, Writing
I was sitting in a workshop at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, watching Scott Russell Sanders field questions about his career. If you don’t know Scott’s work, he’s written a bunch of books and made his living that way, with a side of teaching...
by AnnSheybani | Oct 12, 2025 | Reading
Every Iranian New Year, we’d drive through Abadan, and I’d watch the flames shooting from the tops of those massive stacks—the oil refinery burning off excess natural gas like some kind of industrial volcano. The infrastructure stretched for acres, a...
