Why Is Literature Important in Our Lives

An Iranian fiction-writer and poet, Leila Sadeghi (born 1977) is part of the experimental creative writing movement in Iran. She is also a literary critic and holds a Ph.D. in the cognitive Linguistics (focused on literature) Program at the University of Tehran and also has published many books and papers on language and literature. Leila Sadeghi's stories do not follow the conventions of commonly written prose. There are several aspects to her stories. First, the language that she uses in her writings is stylistically between poetry and prose, both syntactically and semantically. Also, she makes frequent use of features of language metaphorically. Her stories invite the reader to co-construct the underlying meanings of the phrases that she uses. The ways in which words are strung together in her stories are meant to allow for several layers of meaning to be brought into the text by the readers. The translations of her stories equally try to achieve these points. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx