Haleh Liza Gafori is a Persian American translator, vocalist, poet, and educator. She grew up hearing recitations of Persian poetry and has deepened her connection through singing and translating it. Her book, GOLD, is a fresh selection and translation of Rumi’s poems — its title a reference to Rumi and other Sufi poets being alchemists, transforming mental states and feeling states into “the deepest love, the deepest generosity, the most expansive consciousness that we can touch, the ecstatic.” Gafori aims to transmit the whirling movement and leaping progression of thought and imagery in Rumi’s poems into the music of contemporary American poetry. She has performed in venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Fetzer Institute’s Gathering on Love and Forgiveness. Gafori is also a musician who has played events at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center.