Farhad
Bababei

The writer Farhad Babaei was born in Tehran in 1977. He began writing in his early 20s and has since authored numerous novels, only two of which were able to be published in Iran and were banned shortly thereafter. He taught creative writing to children and young adults before his teaching license was revoked. Farhad Babaei has never accepted the censorship of his works. As a result, most of them could only be published abroad or circulated in Iran as underground literature. After the publication of his work abroad, Babaei faced increasing threats and persecution and came to Bratislava in 2023 on his first ICORN fellowship and to Berlin in 2025 as part of the same program.

His novella Jamming (2012) was also banned in Iran and published in German (Der antennierte Riesenpapa) by dort-Verlag in 2023. Farhad Babaei also writes screenplays for short films (most recently Density of Emptiness, 2023, directed by Shirin Barghnavard).