Nazanine was born in Tehran in 1978, at the onset of the Iranian Revolution. At the age of eight, during the Iran-Iraq War, she moved to Canada with her family and grew up in Surrey, British Columbia. This early displacement and life between two cultures turned her into a narrator of profound struggles rooted in her homeland yet branching toward distant horizons.

Her quest for a literary voice culminated in an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia (UBC). While contributing fiction and non-fiction to publications like the Vancouver Observer, Nazanine spent years researching the atmosphere of Tehran from the 1950s to the 1970s, striving to unearth a feminine odyssey from the heart of history.

Nazanine Hozar achieved significant acclaim with the publication of her 2019 debut novel, Aria. The story follows a girl abandoned in a Tehran alleyway in the 1950s, named after “arias”—operatic songs which, as the author describes, are cries in the night to express secret dreams and pains. The novel was praised by Margaret Atwood and has been translated into over ten languages.

The resonance of Nazanine’s voice as a finalist for the prestigious Amazon Canada First Novel Award and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize (2020) established her as a serious figure in Canadian literature. Through a feminist and humanistic lens, she depicts a polarized society’s religious and class divides. Her legacy in Storyology is the transformation of individual suffering into a universal, epic narrative.