Marjorie Lotfi was born in New Orleans, moved to Tehran as a baby with her American mother and Persian father, and fled Iran with one suitcase and an hour’s notice during the Iranian Revolution. After waiting with family for her father’s return in her mother’s tiny hometown in Ohio, she lived in different parts of the US before moving to New York as a young lawyer in 1996 and then back and forth to the UK, settling in the UK in 1999, and in Scotland in 2005. She now lives between Edinburgh and Galloway.
Marjorie is one of the ILX 10 ‘Rising Stars of UK Writing’, a Royal Literary Fund Fellow and a member of Writer’s Mosaic. Her poems have been published widely, most recently on London’s Poems on the Underground, included in Best Scottish Poems and performed on BBC Radio Scotland/BBC Radio 4. Marjorie was one of the three winners of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021, and her first book-length collection, The Wrong Person to Ask (Bloodaxe Books, 2023) is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.
Marjorie was one of the three winners of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021, and her first book-length collection, The Wrong Person to Ask (Bloodaxe Books, 2023) won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. It is also a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, and is on the Longlist for the 2024 Saltire Prize for Best Poetry Book of the Year.
Marjorie also Co-Founded the Belonging Project with Heshani Sothiraj Eddleston, considering the experiences of refugees with over 1,500 participants across Scotland, and is a Co-Founder and Director of the charity Open Book.
