*This event is rescheduled from the previously cancelled reading in November*

Yasmeen Abedifard (b. 1996) is an Iranian-American artist born in the San Francisco Bay Area and is currently based in Oakland, CA, USA. She holds an MFA from Cornell University, where she received the Charles Baskerville Painting Award. Her work is centered around storytelling mediums, including comics, illustrations, and animation. She is currently teaching in the Comics program at The California College of the Arts (CCA) and the UC Berkeley Art Studio. Her work has been featured in various spaces, such as the SF Art Book Fair, Rubenstein Arts Center, Shapeshifters Cinema, Jack Hanley Gallery, and San Francisco Center for the Book, and has received various accolades, including the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Minicomic for Death Bloom in 2023. She has taught comic workshops at BAMPFA, Kala Art Institute, Sequential Artists Workshop, and Black Mountain Institute. She has created several published comics, such as Death Bloom (pub. Lucky Pocket), and Burnt (pub. Wiggle Bird Mailing Club). She is also part of a comics collective called D.R.Y. with her peers, Daniel Zhou and Raul Higuera, aimed at fostering community and highlighting the Bay Area comics scene.

Abedifard’s newest book When to Pick a Pomegranate (pub. Silver Sprocket) has just hit the shelves! The evening’s reading and conversation will focus on this new work.

Taymiya R. Zaman is a professor of history at University of San Francisco with Mughal India as her area of expertise, and has published scholarly articles on memory, history, and kingship in South Asia. She is also an artist interested in visual storytelling and a writer of memoir and fiction.

Abedifard will read from her work and be interviewed by Taymiya Zaman, followed by a short reception in the adjacent upper ground quad. Books will be available for sale and signings.