Layli Shirani is an emerging writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born in the U.S., raised in southwestern Iran, she has now, in the words of June Jordan, “become a Palestinian / against the relentless laughter of evil.” Layli's writing has been anthologized in "Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora" (University of Arkansas Press) and appeared in River Teeth Journal. She has also received support from Aspen Words (Emerging Writer Fellow, 2023), Pen America (Emerging Voices Fellow, 2023), VCCA (50th Anniversary Fellow, 2024), the Periplus Collective (Fellow 2025), Roots Wounds Word (Fellow, 2025), Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, and the Ragdale Foundation.
Layli has worked as a wine bartender (with jazz pairings); a wine writer; and an auction cataloguer and appraiser. In her present career as a lawyer she is most proud of the ways in which her ability to unearth stories and weave narratives has contributed to the exoneration or commutation of criminal sentences. Which is to say: freedom from incarceration. Currently she works as a civil rights lawyer on behalf of American Muslims, finding multiple resonances between the struggles of newly arrived refugees to gain a foothold in this country and her own decades-long struggle toward belonging. These themes are the marrow of her writing.
