About
$12,783
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Farhang Foundation aims to promote Iranian art, culture & literature to the community at large. This two-day, free to public festival will help us give presence to Iranian books as well as books about Iran & books by Iranian authors. The event, held at USC on April 9 -10 2016 will be built around one central theme - celebrating books & promoting reading as a gateway to bring harmony and understanding to our diverse community in Los Angeles and Southern California.
Did you know:
- Farhang Foundation started bringing “Iran Through Books” to Los Angeles Festival of books, starting in 2015. The effort was backed by people like yourself, who helped fund the event through a similar kickstarter campaign.
- The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is an annual program honoring the best of the world publishing community since 1996.
- The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is the largest book festival in the country, attracting more than 150,000 book lovers each year.
Booth reservation and decoration:
- A large booth will be setup for the duration of the festival.
- Karl Altstaetter the illustrator on all the Rostam series books (one of our most popular featured books from last year) will visit our booth again. Karl will organize an illustration workshop at our booth, no reservations required.
- Kurosh Valanejad, the Art Director at the Game Innovation Lab at the USC School of Cinematic Arts is the co-designer of the award winning video game, The Cat and the Coup, about the coup that toppled Mohammad Mosaddeq’s government. Kurosh will walk visitors through the interactive game which is part fun and part history.
Authors: We will be hosting authors during both days of the festival to present their books and engage with their audience. They will offer their books, hold various presentations and workshops and most importantly, sign copies of their work.
- The full list of authors will be announced over the next 20 days on this campaign. So watch closely!
- Quick update: We have so far announced the following authors who will attend our booth in person. Stay tuned to hear about our other authors within the next few days.
- Shabnam Rezaei from "Babak & Friends" and "1001 Nights TV Series" will be our guest at Farhang booth! Shabnam Rezaei is the co-founder of Big Bad Boo Studios, the production company responsible for creation of Babak & Friends, 1001 Nights TV Series and many other books and digital media for children in Persian and English (among other languages). She is the co-creator of Mixed Nutz, a TV series aiming to promote diversity and multiculturalism through a group of friends from Iran, Korea, Cuba, Austria, and India. Ms. Rezaei and her team are passionate about sharing the rich culture of Iran with children of the world. She will be at our booth, sharing with the visitors some of the best selling children’s books and digital videos from Big Bad Boo collection.
- Mehdi Kashani, the winner of the 12th Sadeq Hedayat Annual Short Story Contest will be our guest! Mehdi Kashani is an engineer, film critic and writer. He pursued writing after finishing his Computer Science studies at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He published his first short stories book, "Leila and Other Stories" in 2013. Mehdi won the first place at the 12th Sadeq Hedayat Annual Short Story Contest held in 2014 for “Flip” or “تلنگر”. His collection of short stories in Persian language is soon to be published in Iran.
- Ariana Bundy, award winning Iranian-American chef and cookbook author will be our guest! Ariana Bundy was brought up in New York, London, Switzerland and Paris. She inherited her love of food and cooking from her grandparents - who grew cherries, plums, apricots, apples, wheat and barley, bred sheep and goats for dairy, and had beautiful vineyards producing prized grapes - and from her father, who owned the first fine-dining French restaurant in Iran and later in Beverly Hills. Ariana was Head Pastry Chef for the Mondrian Hotel in LA. Graduate of Le Cordon Bleu and Le Notre in Paris, she trained at Fauchon Patisserie and attended the European Business School in London. Her latest book 'Pomegranates and Roses: My Persian Family Recipes' (Simon & Schuster UK) won an award at the Gourmand Cookbook Awards in 2012 and was shortlisted as the Best Cookery Book at the Writer's Guild Awards in 2013. In her beautiful part cookbook part culinary memoir, Ariana pays tribute to the rich heritage, cultural and culinary, that has shaped her approach to life, cooking, and eating.
Books:
We will have multiple copies of books in the following categories present for guests to flip through during the festival. We will provide barcodes for scanning and detailed information on how to obtain books of interest as well. We will have both Persian and English books in
- Art & Architecture
- Anthropology & History
- Poetry & Literature
- Cookbooks
- and of course Children’s books!
Will there be any surprises at the booth?
- Yes, glad you asked!
- James Douraghy, one of the authors of Shahnameh series will give away 100 copies of his books to the first 100 visitors stopping at our booth during Karl’s workshop.
- Farhang Foundation will give away tote bags, mugs and t-shirts to the first visitors to our booth (while supplies last).
Risks and challenges
This kickstarter event and all the work that goes into giving Iranian culture and literature its fair share at the Festival would be the outcome of contribution of many volunteers, organizers and supporters. Here is a list of challenges we see ahead:
* Raising sufficient funds to make the project possible
* Creating an attractive and interesting space to entice festival attendees to visit and engage with our booth
* Ensuring high quality of books on display to properly represent the richness of Persian literature, the beauty of Iran and the diversity of its authors, artists and architects
* Offering a diverse selection of topics and works to satisfy the literary taste of everyone in our audience
* Inviting celebrated authors to the festival on both days to interact with the attendees, to enrich their encounter and give them an opportunity to meet and converse with such literary figures
Questions about this project? Check out the FAQ
Support
Funding period
- (21 days)