Marjorie Lotfi
Marjorie Lotfi was born in New Orleans, moved to Tehran as a baby with her American mother and Persian father, and fled Iran with one suitcase and an hour’s notice during the Iranian Revolution. After waiting with family for her father’s return in her mother’s tiny hometown in Ohio, she lived in different parts of the US before moving to New York as a young lawyer in 1996. She then moved back and forth between the US and the UK, settling in the UK in 1999 and in Scotland in 2005. She began writing poetry as a child but after university, she stopped for many years, resuming later in adulthood.
Lotfi is one of the ILX10 “Rising Stars of UK Writing,” a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, and a member of WritersMosaic. Her poems have been published widely in The Rialto, Gutter, Magma, and other journals and most recently on London’s Poems on the Underground. Her work has appeared in anthologies including Best Scottish Poems, and she has performed on BBC Radio Scotland/BBC Radio 4. She was one of the three winners of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021.
Lotfi’s first book-length collection, The Wrong Person to Ask (Bloodaxe Books, 2023), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. It also garnered a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation and was shortlisted for the Saltire Prize for Best Poetry Book of the Year. Previously, Lotfi authored the pamphlet Refuge (Tapsalteerie, 2018), which delves into her childhood during the Iranian Revolution. She is co-author of the pamphlet The World May Be the Same (Stewed Rhubarb) and the children’s book Straw Bag, Tin Box, Cloth Suitcase.
With Heshani Sothiraj Eddleston, Lotfi co-founded the Belonging Project, a series of writing works and readings that center the experiences of refugees, with over 1,500 participants across Scotland. She is co-founder and director of the charity Open Book, which organizes over 1,200 readings and creative writing sessions in Scotland each year. Lotfi was previously Deputy Chair of Trustees for StAnza, Scotland’s international poetry festival, chair of the Wigtown Book Festival, and co-editor of New Writing Scotland. She currently lives between Edinburgh and Galloway.
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More Marjorie Lotfi
Video: Lotfi reads poems from The Wrong Person to Ask at the James Berry Poetry Prize winners' launch eventText/Audio: Read and hear poems by Lotfi at WritersMosaic
Text: Read "Picture of Girl and Small Boy" by Lotfi accompanied by her notes on the writing process
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Photo by Heshani Sothiraj Eddleston.