Gina B. Nahai is the best-selling author of Sunday’s Silence, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, and Cry of the Peacock. Her novels have been translated into 16 languages, and are taught at a number of universities and high schools nationwide. She is a contributing author to The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt, which won the 2005 Jewish Book Award. Her writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Magazine. She is the recipient of a 2002 Simon Rockowner Award, and a contributor to The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles and The Huffington Post.

A professor of creative writing at the University of Southern California, Nahai is also a frequent lecturer on the contemporary politics of the Middle East, has been a regular guest on CNBC as well as a number of local television and radio news programs, and has guest-hosted on NPR affiliate KCRW (The Politics of Culture). A judge for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards (Fiction, First Fiction), she has lectured at a number of conferences nationwide, and served on the boards of PEN Center USA West, The International Women’s Media Foundation, and B’nai Zion Western Region. She is a member of the International Women’s Forum, and has been recognized for her writing by Hadassah, as well as Jewish National Fund, and Brandeis University.

Nahai’s first novel, Cry of the Peacock (Crown, 1991) told, for the first time in any Western language, the 3,000-year story of the Jewish people of Iran. It won the Los Angeles Arts Council Award for Fiction. Her second novel, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith (Harcourt, 1999), was a finalist for the Orange Prize in England, the IMPAC award in Dublin, and the Harold U. Ribalow Award in the United States. Her third novel, Sunday’s Silence (Harcourt, 2001), is the tale of a Kurdish Iranian Jew living among Christian fundamentalists in the United States. Her fourth novel, Caspian Rain, was published in September 2007 by MacAdam/Cage.

Nahai holds a BA and a Master’s degree in International Relations from UCLA, and an MFA in Creative Writing from USC. She is a former consultant for the Rand Corporation, and has researched the politics of pre- and post-revolutionary Iran for the United States Department of Defense. She lives in Los Angeles. She’s currently at work on a new novel, In the Kingdom of the Pearl Canon.