Aliyeh Ataei is an Iranian author and playwright. She was born in Iran in 1980 and grew up in a border region between Iran and Afghanistan. Ataei’s work is deeply influenced by her personal accounts of growing up as a border dweller, and she is mostly referred to as an Iranian-Afghan writer. Her novels and personal essays tackle such themes as war, identity, and émigré life. She has received several prestigious awards, including Mehregan-e Adab for Best Novel.
Ataei finished high school in Birjand and left for the capital to continue her studies at Tehran University of Art where she obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees in Dramatic Writing.
Her short stories and essays have been translated and published in American, French, and Italian literary magazines, including Internazionale, Guernica, Kenyon Review, and Massachusetts Review, among many others. In late 2023, her personal essay, Stains, which was published by Southeast Review, received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Ataei’s collection of personal essays, titled Kursorkhi in Persian, was published in translated French by Gallimard in April 2023 to wide critical acclaim as La Frontière des Oubliés.