Dr. Rebecca Ruth Gould is a writer, translator, and Professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative literature at the University of Birmingham. Her poetry and translations have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. You can check out her almanac of reading log too.

I have done a wide variety of work but my most lasting experience was my stay in Tbilisi from 2004 to 2006. I was a Russian literature undergraduate and did research that very few people had seen. Other than this, I love writing about fiction and poetry. The fact that I’m free to explore different genres in writing helps me to love what I do.

Each time I visit Iran, I’m blown away by the vibrancy of the culture. Although people in Iran are very well-read, there is a scarcity of intellectual jobs in Iran. While I was in Iran, I saw a theatrical play that resonated with Iran; the protagonist was highly educated but felt superfluous in the society. I recorded the play and it inspired me to write Watching Chekhov in Tehran.

I went to Chechnya in 2003 on my own to know more about the Chechen. It was a war zone and I had to stay in the refugee camp with the Chechen family. As an American, I grew up in a homogenous society and could not study different languages or cultures of different parts of the world. When I went to Berkeley, it was a transformative moment in my life. Literature was already my first love and I loved reading novels from Dostoevsky which aroused my interest to know more about Russian culture and history.

Reading poetry is therapeutic and I love to do that in my free time.