Soudabeh Alishahi

Oslo - Norway´s third City of Asylum for persecuted writers and artists - welcomes Iranian writer Soudabeh Alishahi Norwegian Forum for Freedom of Expression (NFFE) as well as the various Norwegian writers associations have worked for years in order to establish Oslo as the third Norwegian "City of Asylum" for persecuted writers and artists. In December 1999 a proposition to establish Oslo as a City of Asylum received broad political support, and in the fall 2000 the City Council decided to carry through the propsition. In early February 2001 Iranian writer Soudabeh Alishahi was welcomed as the first persecuted writer to get asylum in Oslo.

Alishahi (37) is educated as a teacher and has thaught high school in Iran. Her first collection of short stories, "Blue and Red", was published in 1999. A second collection as well as a novel were written last year, but publication was stopped by Iranian censorship. Her short stories are mostly about the situation for Iranian women, living in Iran or in exile, and express strong criticism against the prevailing political and religious conditions in the country. She was a member of the group of Iranian writers who tried to launch their own, independant writers association in the fall of 1998. In December that year, two of the writers of this group were kidnapped and later turned up dead. A third writer, Mansour Koushan, was visiting Norway at the time and was later invited to live in Stavanger, Norway´s first City of Asylum.

Alishahi arived in Norway in late 2000 and now lives in Oslo with her daughter.