QAF Narrative No. 61
The Birth of Asemana Books in Toronto
My name arrived in a dream.
Mehrnaz dreamed it, and she and Mahdi gave it to me: Asemana. In Persian, aseman, the word from which my name comes, means sky. Before I had a catalogue, before anyone entrusted me with a manuscript, I had a name that opened upwards.
But some of my roots were underground.
They reached into the years Mahdi Ganjavi spent experimenting with independent and underground publishing in Iran. The internet and digital printing were opening passages through a landscape governed by censorship. A text refused permission could still find another way into someone’s hands.
From those years, he carried a conviction to Canada: publishing is a form of intellectual freedom. In 2017, that conviction became a publishing house. I began to take shape in Toronto, growing into a bilingual press.
My first companion was an old hero travelling towards the future.
Rostam, the legendary warrior of Persian literature, had entered a different kind of adventure in Rostam in the Twenty-Second Century. Mahdi identifies the novel, first published in 1934, as the first Persian science-fiction novel. Decades later, Mahdi and Mehrnaz Mansouri prepared a critical edition, with Toronto artist Mahdi Pourian contributing to its visual life.
An almost-forgotten book acquired a new body in another city.
It was a fitting beginning for me. My first book carried both memory and possibility: a familiar hero in an unfamiliar century, an overlooked work returning to circulation. Before I had much of a history, I was already helping another history breathe again.
At first, I existed one book at a time. There was something worth publishing, so we published it. Then another manuscript arrived.
Around 2022, the rhythm changed. More writers and scholars approached us. Their trust brought new responsibilities. Publishing entered Mahdi’s everyday life, and I grew from a sequence of projects into an institution. Today, around eighty titles carry my name.
Still, a catalogue cannot tell you everything about a life.
Behind each title are decisions about what deserves attention, what has been overlooked, and what we can afford. Mahdi knows these questions from several sides. The writer understands the vulnerability of handing over a manuscript. The historian sees how censorship, distribution and literary institutions determine what survives. The publisher has to find a way to bring the next book into the world.
These are different sides of Mehdi’s own intellectual life: he is a writer, a book historian, and a publisher.
Sometimes a manuscript matters deeply and promises very few sales. We have repeatedly given such books a chance.
Getting them to readers is another journey. Persian readers live across countries, while bookselling systems rarely follow the shape of their scattered communities. English translations face their own distances. Readers may know Iran through headlines without ever encountering the texture of its ordinary lives.
I want those encounters to happen.
I also want the Persian books produced here to be recognized as part of Canadian literature. They are written and published inside this country. Their language does not place them outside its cultural life.
Eventually, my child was born: Asemana Magazine.
Books had given me lasting forms, but I wanted a place where voices could meet more often. The magazine became that gathering place, bringing diasporic writing into conversation with socially and politically engaged writers from different backgrounds.
She has already published many poems by prominent Canadian poets. On October 24, we will celebrate her first birthday with poetry readings by participating poets. Details will be announced soon.
Her first annual print volume carries a title close to my heart: Across Worlds, Against Silence.
I remember Gordon Phinn, the first writer to submit work to the magazine, who died this year. Before this new space could become a community, someone trusted it enough to send us his work.
That is how I continue: through people willing to place their words in my care.
Perhaps I once lived in someone’s imagination. Perhaps I remain standing because others have held me up.
But now I have become Asemana.
A sky no longer underground.
I breathe.
And like a ballerina, I dance to the music writers and poets make together.
YF, October 9, 2026
Note: This narrative is based on an interview with Mahdi Ganjavi, the publisher of Asemana. To explore some of Asemana’s English-language books, follow the links below:
https://asemanabooks.ca/the-qualities-of-children/
https://asemanabooks.ca/stories-from-tehran/
https://asemanabooks.ca/iranian-odyssey/
https://asemanabooks.ca/shape-of-extinction/
https://asemanabooks.ca/sadeq-mamquli/
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The original interview with Mahdi Ganjavi
Yaser:
Can you take me back to the moment when Asemana first became a real possibility for you? What made you decide to start a publishing house in Canada in 2017, and how did you choose the name “Asemana”? What does it mean to you?
Mahdi:
Asemana did not really begin in 2017. In some ways, it grew out of many years of experimenting with self-publishing and underground publishing in Iran. I came of age intellectually in a period when the internet and digital printing were transforming the possibilities of independent literary production in Iran. There was an extraordinary underground and alternative literary scene developing around those technologies. For writers and publishers working outside official structures—particularly Iran’s mandatory pre-publication licensing system, which functions as a severe mechanism of censorship—these new forms of publishing opened possibilities that had not existed before.
My involvement in that world taught me something that has stayed with me: publishing is a form of intellectual freedom. It can create a space where something that might otherwise remain unpublished, forgotten, censored, marginalized, or inaccessible can enter public life.
When I came to Canada, those experiences came with me. Eventually, I began to wonder whether I could build something more lasting from them. In 2017, that possibility became Asemana.
The name itself has a very personal origin. It came to my partner, Mehrnaz, in a dream. She has been foundational to this initiative. We both loved the mystery and poetry of allowing a dream to name the press. “Aseman” means “sky” in Persian, and over time the name has acquired even more meaning for us. I like the idea of the sky as something open, without the kinds of borders we impose on literature, language, and people. In that sense, Asemana has gradually become our attempt to create a small intellectual space under that open sky—a space committed, above all, to intellectual and literary freedom.
Yaser:
What was the first book you published through Asemana, and what do you remember about bringing it into the world? Was there a moment when you felt, “I am a publisher now”?
Mahdi
The first Asemana book was a critical edition that Mehrnaz Mansouri and I prepared of Rostam in the Twenty-Second Century, the first Persian science-fiction novel, originally published in 1934. In retrospect, it was a very appropriate first book for Asemana because it already contained many of the things that would later become central to the press: recovering a forgotten text, taking literary history seriously, and bringing something neglected back into circulation.
I remember the extraordinary amount of love and care that went into producing it. We collaborated with Toronto-based artist Mehdi Pourian on the visual side of the book, and there was something very moving about seeing this almost-forgotten work from the history of Persian literature acquire a new physical life in Toronto decades after its original publication.
But interestingly, I don't think I immediately thought, “I am a publisher now.” For several years, Asemana still felt to me like a series of projects. There was a book we believed in, so we published it. Then another book appeared, and we published that.
The transformation happened gradually, probably around 2022. More authors and scholars began approaching us. People whose work I deeply respected began trusting Asemana with their manuscripts. Publishing ceased to be something I did occasionally and became part of my everyday life. At the same time, I became increasingly conscious of the importance of diasporic publishing itself—of producing books not simply in diaspora, but for diasporic communities and as part of their cultural infrastructure.
Today, with around eighty titles published, I can look back and see that transformation much more clearly. A project had gradually become an institution.
Yaser:
You are a writer, translator, and historian of books as well as a publisher. How have these different roles shaped Asemana, and where do they sometimes pull you in different directions?
Mahdi:
They constantly inform one another. As a writer and translator, I know something about the vulnerability involved in giving a manuscript to someone else. I know how frustrating the relationship between authors and publishers can sometimes become. So, as a publisher, I try to remember what the process looks like from the author's side of the table.
My scholarship has also profoundly shaped Asemana. Much of my research and teaching has concerned twentieth-century print history: how books circulate, how publishing institutions emerge, and how political and economic structures shape what becomes visible and what disappears. Once you spend years studying the history of publishing, it becomes very difficult to think of publishing as simply producing books. You begin to see the structures around the book: censorship, distribution, translation, archives, libraries, booksellers, political power, and the construction of literary canons.
Of course, these roles also pull me in different directions. A scholar can spend years with a single text; a publisher often has to make several decisions in a day. A writer wants time and solitude; publishing is collaborative, logistical, and relentlessly social. And sometimes the scholar in me wants to rescue a historically important work even when the publisher in me knows perfectly well that it may be financially difficult.
But perhaps those tensions are productive. Asemana has developed precisely at the intersection of those different ways of thinking about books.
Yaser:
Asemana publishes fiction, poetry, memoirs, and scholarship, with a particular interest in voices that receive less attention elsewhere. When a manuscript reaches you, what makes you feel that it belongs here? Could you tell me about one book that helped define the press’s identity?
Mahdi:
There is no single formula, but there are certain commitments that have become increasingly clear to us: progressive and experimental literature, diasporic writing, marginalized narratives, intellectually serious scholarship, and works that challenge established literary or cultural boundaries.
At the same time, being committed to voices that have received less attention elsewhere does not mean compromising on editorial standards. We take the selection process very seriously. Manuscripts submitted to Asemana go through a rigorous double-blind review process, so decisions are based not simply on whether a work aligns with our mission, but also on its literary or scholarly quality, originality, and contribution. For me, those two things belong together: creating space for underrepresented voices while maintaining a serious and independent editorial process.
One book that helped clarify Asemana's identity for me was Marzieh Sotoudeh's Textual Mosaic. It is a novel that moves brilliantly between Iranian and Canadian political and social experiences and traumas, while also opening a conversation with Indigenous communities and histories in Canada.
Books like this have helped me understand something that I now consider fundamental to Asemana's mission. Diasporic literature produced in Canada should not simply be treated as literature existing on the margins of “Canadian literature.” It is Canadian literature.
For too long, our understanding of Canadian literature has often been organized primarily around English, French, and Indigenous literary traditions. All three are, of course, essential, and Indigenous literatures in particular demand their own historical and political recognition. But contemporary Canada is also producing extraordinarily dynamic bodies of literature in Persian, Arabic, Albanian, Chinese, Spanish, and many other languages. These literatures are not somewhere outside Canadian culture waiting to be translated into it. They are already being produced inside Canada.
I want Asemana to participate in making that reality more visible—not simply by publishing these works, but by taking them seriously as literature and scholarship worthy of rigorous editorial attention.
Yaser:
Your translation of Sadeq Mamquli brings an early Persian detective novel to English-language readers. What drew you to this book, and what does its journey reveal about the role you want Asemana to play in recovering overlooked literary histories?
Mahdi:
Sadeq Mamquli has been one of the most exciting intellectual journeys of my life because every stage of working on it revealed something new.
It began with finding the text itself and realizing how little was known about it. I first worked to revive it through a Persian edition. Later, through further research, I was able to uncover bibliographical information that shed new light on its author. That process itself contributed to reconsidering the history of genre formation in modern Persian literature, particularly the history of detective fiction.
Translating it into English was the next step, but for me translation here was not simply linguistic. It was an argument about literary history.
I wanted to make a fairly bold statement: even if a book has remained hidden within its own literary tradition, that same book can still have something important to contribute to world literature. Sadeq Mamquli is particularly fascinating because of the way it brings together literary traditions that we rarely place in conversation. On one side is the emerging world of Holmesian detective fiction; on the other is the narrative inheritance of One Thousand and One Nights. Suddenly, these traditions encounter each other within an early modern Persian detective story.
That is one role I hope Asemana can play: not merely “recovering” forgotten works as historical curiosities, but allowing them to disrupt the literary histories we think we already know.
Yaser:
Asemana’s expanded edition of Fereshteh Molavi’s Stories from Tehran brings stories originally written in Persian to readers in English. Who do you imagine reading a book like this, and what have you learned about helping it find readers beyond the Persian-speaking community?
Mahdi:
Fereshteh Molavi is, for me, one of the important women literary figures of contemporary Persian literature, with a lasting contribution both in Iran and in diaspora. Her stories offer something that is surprisingly difficult for many from outside Iran to encounter: the texture of ordinary, secular, complicated life in contemporary Iran, particularly women's lives.
We sometimes forget how mediated the outside world's understanding of Iran has become. Even some of the most progressive Iranian cinema has operated under conditions that make many dimensions of Iranian life difficult or impossible to represent. Literature can enter spaces that cinema, journalism, and political discourse often cannot. A short story can show a room, a relationship, an interior life, a contradiction, or an everyday form of resistance that disappears from geopolitical representations of Iran.
So I imagine Stories from Tehran being read by Iranian or diasporic readers as well as by anyone interested in contemporary literature, women's writing, cities, migration, and the complexity of life under political constraint.
Finding those readers is difficult. We know we are swimming against the tide. For a variety of historical, political, linguistic, and institutional reasons, contemporary Persian literature has largely fallen outside global literary canons. The answer for us cannot be to retreat into a Persian-speaking readership. It has to make us bolder about translation, distribution, partnerships, and introducing these writers to readers who may have no prior relationship with Persian literature.
Yaser:
What has been the hardest part of keeping Asemana going as an independent publisher in Canada? Could you describe a decision when financial realities tested your literary commitments?
Mahdi:
The hardest challenges are infrastructural. Publishing a good book is already difficult; making sure that book actually reaches its potential readers is another problem entirely.
For our Persian-language books, the readership is dispersed across diasporic communities in many countries. Traditional bookselling and distribution systems were not designed for this kind of transnational linguistic community. With our English-language books, the challenge is different: how do you introduce contemporary Iranian, Persian, or West Asian literature to readers who have encountered these societies much more frequently through news media and geopolitics than through literature?
Recent political crises involving Iran, including the recent war on Iran, have unfortunately demonstrated this problem again. Greater media attention does not necessarily produce greater curiosity about the literature, intellectual life, or everyday experiences of a society.
Financial reality enters almost every decision. There are books we know will have small readerships but which we believe should exist. A purely commercial calculation would tell us not to publish them. So for me, this has not really been one dramatic decision; it is a decision we make repeatedly. Do we publish a work because we believe it matters, even when we know its immediate market may be very small? Again and again, we have answered yes. We have rarely, if at all, chosen the financially safest answer.
Yaser:
What led you to launch Asemana Magazine? Was there something you wanted to make possible for writers and readers that publishing books alone could not offer?
Mahdi:
Yes. The magazine grew partly from realizing that books alone could not create the kind of literary conversation I wanted Asemana to participate in.
I wanted Asemana Magazine to intervene more directly in the Canadian literary landscape by placing diasporic literature at the centre rather than treating it as a special category at the margins. At the same time, I wanted it to become a meeting place for progressive, politically and socially engaged writers from different parts of the world. Mansour Noorbakhsh was also a tremendous supporter of the idea and promoted it with great dedication and generosity.
Yaser:
The magazine’s first annual print volume is titled Across Worlds, Against Silence. What does that title mean to you personally, and is there a contribution in the volume that captures what you hope the magazine can become?
Mahdi:
Across Worlds, Against Silence expresses something very close to the philosophy behind Asemana.
We live across worlds—linguistic worlds, political worlds, countries, memories, histories, and literary traditions. Diasporic life makes that especially visible. But I don't think crossing worlds has to mean being permanently divided between them. When experiences cross boundaries and enter into conversation, they can illuminate one another. Literature makes those encounters possible.
“Against Silence” is equally important. Silence can be imposed through censorship, exclusion, indifference, language barriers, publishing economics, or the simple fact that certain experiences never reach the institutions capable of amplifying them. Publishing cannot eliminate those structures, but it can create openings in them.
There are many contributions in the volume that embody this spirit, but I would especially like to remember Gordon Phinn. Gordon was the first author to submit work to Asemana Magazine, and sadly we lost him this year. There is something very meaningful to me about remembering the first person who trusted this new literary space enough to send us his work. I hope the magazine can continue to be worthy of that kind of trust.
Yaser:
When you imagine Asemana five years from now, what do you hope to see happening—in its books, its magazine, and the community around it? What would make you feel that the work you began in 2017 had reached the people you wanted to reach?
Mahdi:
The first hope is sustainability. Independent cultural institutions are fragile, and before dreaming about expansion, I want Asemana to remain intellectually independent and able to continue its work.
But I certainly want it to grow. One of the areas where I feel an increasing sense of responsibility is bringing contemporary Persian literature in translation—and more broadly the work of West Asian writers writing in or translated into English—into much wider global literary circulation.
We have already been able to help bring Persian-language books into mainstream bookselling spaces in Canada. That matters to me because it challenges the assumption that a mainstream Canadian bookstore is necessarily an English- or French-only cultural space. But the next challenge is larger. I want our English-language and translated books to circulate much more successfully beyond the communities from which they emerge.
In five years, I would love to see an Asemana book picked up by a reader who has never read a Persian writer before; to see one of our translated writers taught in a university course alongside writers from other literary traditions; to see our Persian books treated as part of Canada's literary production; and to see Asemana Magazine become a genuine meeting place for writers whose paths might otherwise never cross.
