TEHRAN – American novelist Meg Elison’s book “Find Layla” has been published in Persian.

Hadi Amin has translated the novel published by Chatrang.

A neglected girl’s chaotic coming-of-age becomes a trending new hashtag in a novel about growing up and getting away by an award-winning author.

Underprivileged and keenly self-aware, SoCal fourteen-year-old Layla Bailey isn’t used to being noticed, except by mean girls who tweet about her ragged appearance. All she wants to do is indulge in her love of science, protect her vulnerable younger brother, and steer clear of her unstable mother.

Then a school competition calls for a biome. Layla chooses her own home, a hostile ecosystem of indoor fungi and secret shame. With a borrowed video camera, she captures it all: the mushrooms growing in her brother’s dresser; the black mold blooming up the apartment walls; the unmentionable things living in the dead fridge; all the inevitable exotic toxins that are in Layla’s life. Then the video goes viral.

When Child Protective Services comes to call, Layla loses her family and her home. Defiant, she must face her bullies and friends alike, on her own. Unafraid at last of being seen, Layla accepts the mortifying reality of visibility. Now she has to figure out how to stay whole and stand behind the truth she has shown the world.

Elison is a science fiction author and feminist essayist. Her series, “The Road to Nowhere”, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick award. 

She was a James A. Tiptree Award Honoree in 2018. In 2020, she published her first collection called “Big Girl” with PM Press and her first young adult novel, “Find Layla” with Skyscape. 

Meg has been published in McSweeney’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fangoria, Uncanny, Lightspeed, Nightmare and many other places. 

Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian translation of Meg Elison’s novel, “Find Layla”.

MMS/YAW