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Featured Author
Lailee Bakhtiar van Dillen

Lailee Bakhtiar is an award-winning poet. Her poetry was presented at the San Francisco Book Festival and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. She is the producer of the PBS-affiliate book program "Authors & Critics" airing in ten states.

"...In the end the war is waged in the mind and my soul seeks peace and rest on a distant farm where weapons lay forlorn in fields and corn stalk grow tall..."

Mending Nations, Mending the Red Zone Within, is a poetic journey into our inner battles of love and life. It explores how we can heal with words and reconcile.

Books by this Author

Chai

Chai is Persian tea and the Persian tea ceremony is integral to the life, breath and spirit of all Iranians. The tea house, Chai-Kune, is a meeting place for poets, politicians, and for diversion. A tea planter-shaman brought tea to Iran from India in the 19th century. Chai is grown in the Caspian Sea region.

Mending Nations

Mending Nations is a poetic journey into our inner battles of love and life. It explores how we can heal with words and reconcile. Mending Nations begins within our own hearts and then filters out into our sphere of relationships, reaching the world one heart at a time.

Harem Letters

Harem Letters is the story of four exotic Persian sisters, nicknamed the Roses of Isfahan, who come to America from their war torn country. They bring their dreams of hope, Eastern mysticism and rich culture to share as a legacy for their children. Harem Letters reveals the history of World War II and a family separated during the occupation of Allied powers of the world. The stuggle of the sisters, their wisdom and determination transforms their lives forever.

The Roses of Isfahan
1998 National Press Club Award Winner

The Roses of Isfahan is a collection of Iranian-American short stories. The stories are fiction, although based on true histories, and written in a beautiful poetic fashion.

Included in the book are regional maps, art, illustrations, Persian carpets and historic matter.

Midnight Tales

Eight short ghost stories with happy endings. This book is beautifully laid out with ornate borders throughout. The stories are captivating and fun.

Background

Lailee McNair Bakhtiar is a graduate of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC with a degree in French literature; and has an MAT in French from the College of Notre Dame de Namur, Belmont, CA. She is an award-winning author of poetry, short stories, novels, and children’s books.

FREE Poetry

Antigone's Mystery
East and West
Toward the Angels

Short Stories

Kismet
Down the Carpeted Road

Awards

Lailee has been awarded more than 14 times for her writing. She has spoken at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival (poetry), the San Francisco Book Festival (poetry), the University Club Book Fair, Washington, D.C. and at the United Nations, NY, 2000, to a conference of UNESCO on women in culture.

Authors & Critics

As both host and producer of Authors & Critics, TV originating at KCSM TV San Mateo, CA, Lailee has interviewed hundreds of authors. The program has aired ten seasons. Authors interviewed have included Pulitzer Prize winners’ Robert Olen Butler, Oscar Hujeulos, Ernest J. Gaines. Additional authors interviewed include Isabel Allende, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chitra Divakaruni Ann Lammot, and Whitney Otto.

Journalism

Lailee simultaneously worked for KRON-NBC affiliate in San Francisco for seven years producing for their community relations programming. Prior to her television career she worked as a freelance print journalist for eight international magazines. She has interviewed Arthur Ashe, the Honorable George Shultz, LeRoy Neiman, Chris Evert and Becky London, daughter of Jack London, to name a few.

Roots

Lailee is an ancient Persian and Arabic name made famous by twelfth century Persian poet Nizami in his love story Layla and Majnun. Lailee means the night, as in Alfa Layla Wa Layla, A Thousand and One Nights. Her mother is Parveen Bakhtiar McNair of the Bakhtiar tribal clan in the Zagros Mountains of Iran and her father, Frederick Vallette McNair, III, from the McNair’s of Washington, D.C. and USNA in Annapolis, MD.

Home Life

Lailee has three children, Vince, Soraya and Hague. She lives, writes and teaches in Annapolis, MD.

Lailee Bakhtiar van Dillen with best-selling authors Katherine Neville (The Magic Circle, The Eight) and Alev Croutier (Seven Houses) at a book signing.