Iranian Canadian poet Bänoo Zan wins 2025 Freedom to Read Award
The annual award recognizes work that is passionately supportive of the freedom to read
Poet Bänoo Zan has won the 2025 Freedom to Read Award.
Presented by the Writers' Union of Canada, the annual award recognizes work that is passionately supportive of the freedom to read.
Zan is a self-exiled Iranian Canadian poet, translator and essayist whose work focuses on feminist themes and the injustices of the cleric-led regime in Iran.
"Who we are is not what happens to us, it's how we go through these things emotionally and artistically," she said in an interview with CBC Radio's IDEAS in 2022.
Her books include Songs of Exile and Letters to My Father and she founded the poetry open mic Shab-e She'r. She co-edited Woman, Life, Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution, an international poetry anthology that will be published in April 2025.
In 2010, Zan decided to leave Iran to be able to write and live more freely. While Iran has a rich literary tradition and reverence of poets is near universal, it is also a country where poets can be viewed as dangerous.
"Because poetry still makes a difference," she said.
"Here [in Canada] you can write a poem about any political figure and nobody would even care. In Iran, especially when a prominent poet writes a protest poem, it goes viral. Everybody reads it. It's a call to action."
Zan was nominated for the Freedom to Read Award by another Canadian author.
"Bänoo Zan has demonstrated her commitment to enriching the lives of others and the communities in which they live, by creating brave spaces for freedom of expression," they wrote in a press statement. "Her dedication and many contributions to ensuring diverse voices are heard (in verbal and written form) is outstanding."
Last year's winner was journalist and writer Brandi Morin.
Other past winners include Brandi Morin, Anjula Gogia, Ivan Coyote, David A. Robertson, Jael Richardson, Gary Geddes, Deborah Campbell, Mohamed Fahmy and Lawrence Hill.
Freedom to Read Week runs Feb. 23-March 1, 2025.
With files from Nahlah Ayed/ CBC Radio's IDEAS
