Mahmood Karimi Hakak, MFA, SED

Educator, poet, author, translator, theatre director, filmmaker, and

Founder and CEO of Café Dialogue LLC.

Mahmood Karimi Hakak is an award-winning poet, author, translator, and theatre and film artist whose work centers on intercultural dialogue and peacebuilding. He has created over fifty theatre and films, including Passion of Ashura, (the first staging of Persian Tazieh in the U.S., Best Director, NJ Theatre Festival, 1979), Seven Stages (Baltimore Theatre Projects, Critic’s Pick, Edenborough Theatre Festival Fringe, 1991), Common Plight (Feature Film, Iran, 1995), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Critic’s Award, 1999 Fajr International Theatre Festival, Tehran. This play was raided and closed down by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards), Selection from Rumi’s Mathnavi (the first theatrical adaptation of the works of 12th century Persian poet and philosopher in the U.S., LaMaMa, ETC, NYC, 2000), Benedictus: Iran, Israel, U.S. Collaboration Project (Critic’s Pick, World Theatre Festival, LAETC, San Francisco and Los Angeles, 2007), Glass Wall (documentary film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 2010), Child Soldier (Beaudoin Theatre, Albany, NY, 2014), and Robeteh-y Baz-e Zana-Shohari (Los Angeles, 2018). Karimi Hakak’s literary credits include three books of poetry, four translations, six plays, and numerous book chapters, articles, and interviews, including Your Lover’s Beloved: 51 Ghazals by Hafez (nominated for the best translation of poetry by American Literary Translators Association, Cross Cultural Poetry Press, 2010), Is the One I Love Everywhere? (a dialogue between Jalalaldin Rumi and Forough Farrokhzad, FCI Press, 2020), Iran Is the Stage and Youth Its Major Players (book chapter, Performing Iran, I.B. Tauris, 2022), and Shakespeare in Tehran: Meeting the Mothers of Those Who Lead the Iranian Revolution of Woman, Life, Freedom (Rutledge, 2023). Dr. Karimi Hakak has taught at a number of colleges and universities in the U.S., Europe, and his native Iran. He presently serves as Professor of Creative Arts at Siena College in upstate New York.