Susan Atefat-Peckham (1970–2004) was born in New York to Iranian immigrant parents and lived most of her life in Switzerland and the United States. Her collection of poetry, That Kind of Sleep, won the National Poetry Series in 2000, selected by Victor Hernández Cruz, and was published by Coffee House Press. In addition to writing poetry, she was an accomplished pianist and visual artist. She taught creative writing at Hope College and Georgia College, and was a volunteer for Caritas, Habitat for Humanity, and the United Way. Since her death in 2004 while on a Fulbright Scholarship in Amman, Jordan, Atefat-Peckham’s anthology of Middle Eastern writing, Talking Through the Door, was published by Syracuse University Press, and her collection Deep Are These Distances Between Us was released by CavanKerry Press in 2023, with editorial help from her son, Darius Atefat-Peckham.