“Whenever you are angry, take a beautiful object in your house and smash it to pieces. The pity you feel for what you have done is silly compared to what you are doing to your mind: taking a sacred moment to be alive and desecrating it by being angry.”

writer, poet, and academic

Kamand Kojouri is a writer, poet, and academic, and a fellow of the Emirates Literature Foundation. She is known for her poetry and prose, and for two poetry collections, The Eternal Dance and God, Does Humanity Exist? Her poems and short stories have appeared in anthologies and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her work has also been featured in El País, The Irish Times, and BBC Persian Television. Her poem “Let My Silence Grow” was later adapted into a chorale composition by Zachary J. Moore and performed internationally, including by the Luther College Nordic Choir.