Allia Sadeghipour

President, Producer, Performer, Artist & Educator

​Allia (A. E.) Sadeghipour (she/they) is a queer Iranian-American Surrealist, humanist, writer, teacher, punk, poet and Drag King. She is President of the Women Writing Berlin Lab e.V. and has taught workshops locally and internationally for GLADT and Feminist film organizations.

She won the Sherry Debrowski Prize for Best Feminist Multi-Genre Fiction writer in 2009 and has not stopped since. Most recently, her work has been featured in The Bear: Favorite Storyteller (2018 & 2020), KCRW and the Goethe Institute (2018 & 2020), The V Series Poetry Anthology (2019), Berlin Untelevised (2019), Coven (2019), What's Afghan Punk Rock Anyway?! (2019), The Ghosts of Berlin: Der Geister von Berlin (2019), Literarische Diverse (2019), Teach the Rainbow: Insights from LGBTeachers about Queer Visibility (2020), Salty World (2022) and much more. She has had the honor of performing for Pop-Kultur, GLADT, Wicked, Nightschool Berlin, Viva Con Aqua, SO36, the IDP Collective, and the Iranian Re(connect) Festival.

By sharing narratives and perspectives, she hopes to reach out to the world and introduce them to hers. Visit her at www.awerfjil.com.

@awerfjil #awerfjil
@thegoldendickdragking

Tell us who you are in 3 book titles:

Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands

Growing up as a mixed kid, there were many moments in my life when I felt that I did not fit in or I was not enough. Not American enough. Not Iranian enough. Not feminine enough. I was also heavily corrected in school for my language usage and spent time with speech pathologist to get rid of my accent. Anzaldúa’s book addresses these concepts but creates a manifesto for those who live in the borderlands. Those of us who do not seem to fit in any one box, but rather multiple and so many that they blend together. She mixes personal stories, analytical texts, and both Spanish and English to demonstrate the experiences of a mestiza. She helped me find validity in my voice.

Simone de Beuvoir’s The Second Sex and Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror

This is a tie between these two very different philosophers and they both wrote at the same time and navigated similar circles. At the time, it was very rare to find women philosophers but these two were hugely under represented. Both of them discuss the importance of being a woman and the complexity of such. Beuvoir discusses the concept of sexuality at a time when it was quite taboo and her words still ring true today. Kristeva discusses the darkness and abjection (the state of being cast off) that women carry with them for merely existing. Yet again, these women had put into words what I had felt my whole life.

Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time

One of my favorite children’s books growing up dealt with the concept of time travel as three young children had to navigate their journeys through time guided by their aunts. Meg Murray one of the main characters was often described as being emotionally immature but having great potential. As a young girl growing up,we are often told that our emotions get the best of us or that we are too emotional, but reading a book focusing on universes and time travel and the potentiality of a young girl’s growth into a great woman made a great impression on me as a young child and I hold it with my to this day.