Hajar Hussaini is the author of Disbound (University of Iowa Press, 2022) and the translator of the Persian-language novel Death and His Brother by Khosraw Mani (Syracuse University Press, 2026), which won a 2025 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant.
While at MacDowell, Hussaini completed the English translation of the Persian language poetry collection Wounded Vita Nuda by Maral Taheri, a contemporary poet from Afghanistan whose poetry could not be published due to social and legal censorship in neither of the two Persian-speaking countries, Iran or Afghanistan. The proposal to translate this work into English won the Mo Habib Translation Prize in Persian Literature in 2024, and it's set to be published in a bilingual Persian-English edition by Deep Vellum in 2026.
Hussaini also worked on a series of epistolary poems addressed to an imaginary resident of Kabul, Afghanistan, who would return to the country after the fall of the current Taliban regime. These poems reflect her experiences living in Kabul after the fall of the first Taliban regime, thematizing matters that weren't considered by her generation when they dreamed of rebuilding the country. Through these poems, Hussaini engages in dialogue with a future version of herself, who she envisions as someone who will break free from the cycles of failed governments and create a history that differs from the generations that came before her.
