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WAALM hereby proudly announces the award winners of 2008 in category of Literature, who shall receive the Persian Golden Lioness statuette OR Diploma & Gold Medal of Excellence.? ? Awardees in Category of Literature(Part 2): - Prof. Dr. Patrick Hunt, Best Iranian Studies (Including Engineering An Empire, Persian) - Drs. Vesta & John Curtis,OBE, Best Research (Ancient Iran) - Mr. Eric Jerpe, Best Novellet Fiction (The return of Scheherazade) - Ms. Ren A. Hakim, Best Screenplay (Xerexes) Professor Patrick Hunt He is an archaeologist at Stanford University whose research in 2007-2008 has been sponsored by the National Geographic Society. His Ph.D. in 1991 is from the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, University of London. He is also an award-winning composer, author and poet. His books include CARAVAGGIO (London, 2004), HOUSE OF THE MUSE (New York, 2005), REMBRANDT: HIS LIFE IN ART (New York 2006), ALPINE ARCHAEOLOGY (New York, 2007), TEN DISCOVERIES THAT REWROTE HISTORY (New York, 2007), MYTHS FOR ALL TIME (New York, 2007), RENAISSANCE VISIONS: MYTH AND ART (New York, 2008) and POETRY IN THE SONG OF SONGS (New York, 2008). He is also a Hannibal scholar and has appeared frequently on the History Channel on Ancient Persia and Carthage and also on National Geographic Explorer TV. He is currently writing a biography on HANNIBAL and one to follow on CYRUS THE GREAT. One of his most popular repeat courses at Stanford is on the Art and Archaeology of Persia. As a composer, he has been awarded ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) awards for consecutive years between 1997-2000 and 2005-2008 for Classical music composed and performed globally, including his SONGS OF EXILE commissioned and performed in 1999 in Washington DC and at Duke University. He has also written program note essays for San Francisco Opera’s TOSCA (2004) and is composing an opera, BYRON IN GREECE, arias of which have been performed in London and Switzerland, and is composing a lieder cycle, THE GARDEN OF CYRUS. Drs. Vesta & John Curtis Dr. John Curtis was appointed a Research Assistant in the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities (now Middle East) in 1971, becoming Assistant Keeper in 1974 and Keeper in 1989.He is mainly interested in the archaeology and history of Iraq and Iran circa 1000-330 BC. Between 1983 and 1989 he directed excavations on behalf of the British Museum at eight different sites in Iraq, including Nimrud and Balawat. Since becoming Keeper he has overseen the installation of six new permanent galleries at the British Museum. He has also curated the traveling exhibition Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum that has been sent to nine venues worldwide, and the special exhibition Forgotten Empire: the World of Ancient Persia at the British Museum September 2005-June 2006, that attracted 155,000 visitors. Dr.Curtis is Member of Governing Council of British School of Archaeology in Iraq, Trustee of Ancient Persia Fund, Member of Editorial Board of Iranica Antiqua, Elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries 1984, Elected Fellow of the British Academy 2003, The 2005 Iran Heritage Foundation Award for outstanding contributions to the promotion and preservation of the heritage and culture of Iran. He was Awarded OBE 2006 “for services to museums” Among his Publications: Forgotten Empire: the World of Ancient Persia, with N. Tallis, (British Museum Press 2005) ; Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum, with J.E. Reade, (British Museum Press 2005); “The Oxus Treasure in the British Museum”, in Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia, 10 (2004), pp. 293- 338; Ancient Caucasian and Related Material in the British Museum, with M. Kruszynski, British Museum Occasional Paper no.121 (British Museum 2002); Ancient Persia (British Museum Publications 2000)
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Dr Vesta Curtis is a curator in the Department of Coins and Medals at The British Museum and is also the Secretary of the British Institute of Persian Studies. She has been the editor of Iran, the journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, since 1984 and has excavated in Iran at Bastam, Tepe Nush-i Jan, Tepe Malyan and Qaleh Yazdigird. Amongst her publications are: Persian Myths (BMP, 1993, 1996, 1998, 2000) and The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Persia (I.B. Taurus, 1997). Mr. Jerpe Eric Joseph Jerpe was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1949 and there raised until moving away to State College, Pennsylvania, at age eighteen to attend the Pennsylvania State University. He graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in 1971 with a Science Degree in Statistics. After a few years of drifting, he began employment as a research statistician with the International Monetary Fund, there remaining from 1975 until his retirement in 2005. He produced country ages , graphs and time series tables for the monthly publication, International Financial Statistics. He traveled extensively to relatively remote places such as Iran, India, Mongolia and Tanzania. In his first year of retirement, he circumnavigated the globe, voyaged up the Amazon River , and attended the 2006 Winter Olympics. He is a certified scuba diver and a member of the Washington Independent Writers. In 2004, Eric Jerpe founded Edgerton Publishing, officially registering the proprietorship in the State of Maryland. He is the author of two works of fiction: the forty-chapter, 584-page novel Beckoning Star: A Romance of the Distant Future, and the five-chapter 108-page novella The Return of Scheherazade: A Messianic Fantasy. Ms. Ren A. Hakim Ren A. Hakin would like to consider herself a modern day Sheherezad. A Broadcast Arts graduate from the United States, she describes her upbringing as, 'Middle East meets Midwest.' While her mother was born and raised in America, her father is from the land once known as Mesopotamia - Iraq. This connection to a region so deeply rooted in the past sparked her fascination with history and instilled an appreciation for the lessons to be learned from it. Growing up in multicultural home is something she counts as a blessing. Some may say she has enjoyed the best of both worlds, but her parents gave her the gift of seeing it is, in truth, ONE. This is a central message of Ren's 'novelized' screenplay, Xerxes, which tells the tale of the most feared and revered figure of his time, breathing new life into the emperor - revealing the man. It is a provocative story that illustrates a past shockingly parallel with the present, but inspires hope that the future is not yet lost. It is a saga of love, war and, ultimately, the journey to find one's purpose in life. Ren would like to believe that, through writing, she has found her own.
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