Firoozeh Dumas is a New York Times best-selling author and humorist whose unique blend of wit and warmth has captivated readers worldwide. With her signature storytelling, Firoozeh brings to life tales of family, culture and identity, weaving humor into universal experiences. Her acclaimed works, such as Funny in Farsi and Laughing Without an Accent, showcase her ability to find humor in the challenges of navigating different cultures, making her both a beloved literary voice and an ambassador for empathy through laughter. Firoozeh’s engaging style not only entertains but also reminds us of the power of humor to bridge divides and celebrate our shared humanity.
It’s my pleasure to share recent wit and wisdom from a conversation with my friend Firoozeh:
On influences: The biggest influence in my childhood was my father’s oral storytelling skills. I grew up listening to his stories, and I was absolutely mesmerized by his talent at sharing the stories of his life. And to this day, stories are my favorite thing in the whole world.
On happiness: I love connecting with people. I am truly a people person, and I think that everybody has a story to tell, and everybody’s story counts, and I just love the opportunity to get to hear people’s stories.
I love my job. I love being a writer. I love working with teachers and students and readers, and I love words. So I’m considering myself extremely lucky that I get to spend my life surrounded by words.
‘Serendipity’ is my favorite word. My entire journey has been shaped by serendipity. I mean, I could literally write an entire book about it.
On challenges: The challenge I’ve had along the way is that every idea that I have, and I’ve been a published writer now for 21 years, there are a lot of people who think it’s a bad idea, and that’s my biggest challenge. I seem to have a knack for coming up with ideas that don’t really seem to appeal to a lot of people. But I do them anyway, of course, and then they are good ideas. So I think my biggest challenge is just believing in myself when it always seems like my ideas are just impractical.
You know, I’m a humorist, and the last piece that I wrote is about grief, and I decided to do it on Audible, because I want to bring back the one hour story. And, you know, that was really hard to convince people that this was something that should be done.
But I keep doing what I want to do because I don’t know how else to live. And maybe it just keeps getting easier as I get older. I think it actually does.
On innovation, creativity and ideas: Ideas find me. I’m just a vessel. I don’t know how that happens.
On strategies to assess risks and opportunities: You know, I don’t assess risk or opportunities. If I have a story to tell, I just tell it. And I know that authenticity attracts people. So as long as I’m being authentic, I know there’s an audience for whatever it is that I’m doing.
On playfulness: I’m a humorist, so I love joy. I am an active seeker of joy. And I’m very curious. I think there’s something interesting about everybody. There’s no such thing as a boring person. In fact, when people are considered boring, I really consider it a challenge to find something very interesting about them. You know, I’m that person you don’t want to sit next to on an airplane. I’ve met a lot of friends on airplanes.
On intuition: My intuition 100% guides me. I recently went through a very difficult life change. I went through a divorce that was not initiated by me, and that really threw me into a lot of questioning, because I felt like my marriage to this person, and it had been a very long marriage, was absolutely destined, and it was what my intuition had told me. And so I really had to come to terms — how is it that something that was meant to be didn’t end up as well as one would have thought? And so that sent me into a whole other spiritual journey, which I will go into another time.
Balancing independence and collaboration: I love collaboration. I love it. And I just feel like when I need to collaborate, the right person shows up. I can’t explain how that works, but that’s how it works.
On being an Artist: The world is full of naysayers. They don’t mean to be naysayers, but I’m the only artist in my family. I come from very practical people. We’re engineers and accountants and doctors. I think if you are an artist, and you’re doing kind of crazy things, you have to find people who believe in you so that when you have those moments of doubts, you can go to them.
By the way, being an artist doesn’t mean that you’re a painter or a musician. You can be a scientist and be an artist. It just means being creative, being out of the box.
There are a lot of naysayers out there. But risk taking is a part of life. If you’re creative, then you’ve got to get comfortable with taking risks.
Keep doing what you love to do. I think that loving what you do keeps opening more roads, more windows, more doors.
Firoozeh, what’s exciting you right now?
I just released an audio story called Sob, on Audible. I recently read it live for the first time at the Sun Valley Writers Conference, and the reaction blew me away. So that is very exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing where that story goes, because that’s a story that came to me truly, truly, truly through divine inspiration. It came out of me like an exorcism. I wrote night and day for 10 days. And you know, when something comes to me from another source like that, then I know it’s going places. Stay tuned.
I highly recommend listening to Firoozeh’s Sob. It’s remarkable. It’s a joy to hear Firoozeh’s voice as she narrates with grace and emotion. Her moving story of heartbreak and grief, peppered with smiles, will touch your heart and stay with you.
