Hi. Welcome to my website. I’m Homa Pourasgari, author of three books. I was born in Tehran, Iran. My father was a successful businessman, and I was lucky to be able to travel from a young age, and meet people from various walks of life. My works are about family, love, friendship, and giving voice to the voiceless through fiction. If you're interested in knowing how I became a writer, keep on reading...
I always enjoyed writing, wrote essays, and short stories in my English classes, and received positive feedback. I attended The Buckley School, and later Loyola Marymount University. I had a lot of friends, but I was not like the other students. I wanted to get some perspective about who I was, and why I was so nonconforming.
After my university studies, I went abroad to improve my French and to study literature. I met people from all over the world, and we connected perfectly well. It was then that I realized there is nothing wrong with being a misfit, and that people who grow up in diverse cultures are different from others. Traveling, and temporarily living in various countries opened my mind, and exposed me to understanding values that were unlike my own.
As for my writing, I didn’t always write well, but I wrote anyway because I liked it. My early years English and history teachers in the U.S were super kind and supportive. And it wasn’t until I met my senior year high school teacher that I realized some professors were just mean. This one teacher told me that I would never succeed in any career that required the English language. She was angry that I challenged to be in her class because I qualified to be in an advanced English class.
When I went to college, they stuck me in an English as a Second Language class, because I didn’t test well on the SAT test scores. I challenged that as well, and the chairman of the English department put me in a top advanced English class taught by the dean of English department. The dean of the English department did not like me and wanted to kick me out. On my first day, he started miming with his hands and enunciating his words, because he thought I didn't understand him. I showed him the slip of paper signed by the chairman of the English department that said I qualified to be in his class. He was not pleased.
A month down the road, he accused me of cheating on one of my papers, but he had no way of proving it. So, he said that I would have to take a test. I said, no problem, but since your accusation has no foundation, you must make everyone in the class take a test. So, he made everyone take a test, and it turned out that he was wrong. He apologized, but he was never able to bring himself to give me the well-deserved "A" for my work.
Years later, I went on to take some creative writing classes at UCLA. The beginning classes were all good until I got to this top-level class. I was told by my teacher and my peers that I should write in my “Persian” accent, because it was more charming and it befitted me. It was such an insult that I finally decided that I’m done. I’m going to go out on my own.
I continued with my writing, but I needed a day job. I had small part-time jobs while attending college, and when I stepped into the real world, I worked in many industries such as marketing, banking, fitness, retail, and accounting, but I always went back to writing. My family would say, well, that’s a nice hobby, but you can’t make money in it. They were right because the writing industry is tough and things were even tougher and worse when I started.
There was no Amazon. Bookstores were not willing to carry your book. Print on demand did not exist. And it was nearly impossible for most writers to go out on their own without the support of large publishing houses. Throughout the years, I shredded many of my manuscripts because they weren’t good, and finally I had success in 2003 when I started a novel, finished it, and published it in 2006. That was my first book titled, Lemon Curd.
Even so, at that time and up to recently, there were a lot of stigmas attached to publishing your own work. When my second book, The Dawn of Saudi, came out, someone I knew on Facebook wrote to me publicly and said, “Maybe I should publish my own work like you so that I can win an award,” meaning that I didn’t deserve the award I received because my book was self-published. I have learned not to care about what people say, and continue with my writing. Both Lemon Curd, and The Dawn of Saudi were revised in 2023. And I'm currently working on a new book which takes place in Los Angeles, and Dublin.
Today, some big-name authors have left their large publishing houses and have gone Indie. I have no problem with being Indie or signing up with a publishing house. I work hard, and spend countless hours to bring a good product to my readers. So, if you are here because you have read one of my books, thank you for visiting. If this is your first time learning about me, I hope that my work will not disappoint.