Sheema Kalbasi is a human rights activist, an award winning poet and literary translator. She is the director of the Dialogue of Nations through Poetry in Translation, director of Poetry of the Iranian Women Project, the poetry editor of The Muse Apprentice Guild and the co-director of Other Voices International. Kalbasi's literary work is distinguished by her passionate defense of ethnic and religious minorities' rights. She has worked for the United Nations and the Centre for non Afghan Refugees in Pakistan and in Denmark.