Ali Asghar Seidabadi, an Iranian writer, promoter and researcher on children and young adult’s literature, was born in 1971 to a farmer family at a village between two historical cities of Neishabur and Sabzevar (Bayhaq).
When starting high school, he was already a reading teenager, a bookworm. Those were the years when Saddam Hussein of Iraq had started a war against Iran, and therefore, many people volunteered for front-lines, including the young. At 1986, when he was only 15, Ali joined the army of defenders.
About this experience he remembers: “On several occasions, I had the chance to travel 100 kilometers back to Ahwaz, where I could talk to a sidewalk bookseller on literature and poetry. Later, I found that he was a poet himself. He recommended new books every time and with the books I bought, I built a small library in the camp, reading and passing those hot and boring days.”
When he returned from war, he had changed a lot. One such a change was his interest in books and teamwork which together made him a books and reading promoter when young.
In 1988-1992, he was the manager of the local library of his birthplace village. With his new ideas, he turned it to a cultural and social institute where not only were new books continually added and village children would enjoy reading them but also theater and music groups were established. In addition, the library also turned to an educational center for the villagers’ agricultural needs and skills.
It was in those years that, at his late adolescence, he got to know about some juvenile magazines and started his correspondences and sending them his poems, stories and reviews; and thus had his first writings published.
Those publishings changed his destiny by making journalism as his primary choice for his higher education in the best universities of the country. Seidabadi, at 20, made his way to the University of Tehran. So, he moved to the capital city.
He then worked as the manager for adolescent magazines in 1994-96 while he wrote book reviews and poems for some children and adolescent journals. He published Uncle’s Minibus, his book for children with colorful images of the car.
Siedabadi was one of the founders of the Iranian Association of Writers for Children and Young Adults, and in 1999, was elected as one of the members for its board of directors in the first round of its elections along other well-known writers of the board. As the youngest member of the board, he was accepted to be also its secretary in the second round.
He also planned the Home Libraries festival in 2002 as he was also influential on its policies. The main idea of the festival was to develop unofficial libraries at homes, residential complexes, or even trade unions or workshops.
Along these voluntary activities, Seidabadi, at this time, did other things too – mostly related to books and culture – to earn his living. First, he cooperated with the professional international journal of The Biennale of Children and Youth Book Artists as its editor-in-chief for some months. Then, he was the director of Young Writers section at the Tehran International Book Fair. After that, he became a member and then editor-in-chief of Research Journal of Children and Young Adults Literature.
At the same time, he wrote books for children and adolescents, while he did researches and wrote criticisms on those literatures which were awarded in different festivals.
Promoting Book Reading as a Journalist
The new political era in Iran had made the media more sensational, and one of the most attractive and influctial jobs of the time was journalism. For social activity enthusiasts, journalism was a good shortcut – they believed so.
In such an atmosphere, Seidabadi, who had an acdamaic background in journalism and was somehow cooperting with some newspapers, did not hesitate to accept the temptational offer for the secretary position of the cultural and artistic part of a high serculation reformist and influential newspaper, and thus was engaged with a very vicissitudinous job in 2001-2010: many newspapers were closed one after the other – Nowruz, New Yasmine, Vaghaye Etefaghyeh, Eqbal.
Promoting Book Reading as a Writer
Seidabadi who had never lost his touch with children and juvenile literature throughout his journalistic career and would write books for children when newspapers were closed, with the end of the reformist government, found more time to devote himself to writing books – they meant a lot to him besides his social activities.
At this time, he published some of the books he had written before, and this way, he was recognized as a successful writer in children and young adults literature.
Promoting Book Reading as a Bookseller
The events after the 2009 presidency issue in Iran affected his and his family’s life. He and his wife were both journalists. He who had been a member of the editorial board for a reformist newspaper in the past, experienced journalism for a short time in this period too, but soon put it aside.
Politics changed his career, but again he found a way not to distance himself from the world of books and reading. In 2009, together with three of his cultural and artistic journalist friends opened a small bookshop so that they could communicate with customers about books and book reading promotion. They named their shop Agar Book Club [agar means “if” in Persian]. Social virtual networks were beginning their popularity in Iran at that time. So, they created a page on Google Reader and then Facebook to post reviews of the new books they sold, and then collected the reviews weekly and mailed to their contacts and clients as a newsletter.
Despite the bookshop’s being a small one, it presented a new model of communication between the seller and the customer. Many people would go there to enjoy the debates on books. Children and adolescents section of the bookshop was so popular.