An Evening with Roya Hakakian - Poetry and Identity between Iran, Israel and the USA
17.09.2026 um 19:00 Uhr
Venue: Jewish Museum Munich, Sankt-Jakobs-Platz 16, 80331 Munich
Date: Thursday, September 17th, 2026
Time: 19:00
The Munich Research Centre for Jewish-Arabic Cultures is pleased to welcome the acclaimed journalist, poet, and author Roya Hakakian for an evening exploring the intersections of poetry, migration, memory, and Jewish identity.
Born into a Jewish family in Iran, Hakakian experienced the 1979 Islamic Revolution as a young teenager. In 1985, she left Iran and was granted political asylum in the United States. Her memoir Journey from the Land of No (2004), recounting her childhood in revolutionary Iran and her experience of exile, received wide critical acclaim and was published in German translation in 2008. She has also published two acclaimed collections of poetry in Persian.
Today, Hakakian is one of the leading public intellectuals writing on Iran, the Iranian diaspora, and U.S.–Iranian relations. Her work combines personal experience with political and cultural analysis, while her Jewish heritage offers a distinctive perspective on questions of identity, displacement, and belonging.
Since 2015, she has taught at THREAD, Yale University’s writing workshop, and is a Fellow of Davenport College, Yale University. She lives in Connecticut.
Event in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Munich and the BMFTR Transfer-Projekt: „Verflechtung, Vermittlung, Vernetzung: Jüdisch-Arabische Verflechtungsgeschichte in gesellschaftlicher Anwendung und institutioneller Vernetzung“.
