Hadi Mohammadi

I always wanted to be a crow instead of a human. That’s why in most social media sites my profile picture is a crow. I’ve also written stories about crows and found inspiration through them. In other words, there’s an inner crow living inside me. Sometimes when I become too wise, it reminds me, You’re a crow, you shouldn’t plant your feet too firmly on the ground.
     I wrote with my left hand, and when I started school, we had a penmanship teacher who hated lefthanded people. My handwriting was bad, and every chance he got, he would put a pencil between my fingers and squeeze. When I was thirteen, I wrote a composition, and this time, a teacher I really liked predicted that I would become a writer. My youth passed in the chaos of revolution, grueling and merciless. For forty years I’ve been writing and laying my head down to sleep with the hope for freedom. But if I die without freedom, remember that my pen wrote for the love of freedom. —Hadi Mohammadi

Hadi Mohammadi is a celebrated Iranian children’s book writer, researcher, and critic who has published more than forty novels and picture books for children and young adults. He was nominated for a Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006 and in 2021, In the Meadow of Fantasies was selected for IBBY’s Collection for Young People with Disabilities.

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