Mehdi Hejvani has worked in the fields of fiction and children’s literature since 1987. He holds a PhD in Art Research from Tarbiat Modares University (Tehran) and is a retired assistant professor. He has taught children’s literature at Allameh Tabataba’i University and has been active as a lecturer, researcher, writer, and translator of both creative and theoretical works in fiction and children’s literature, some of which have been translated into other languages.

For 34 years, he served as senior editor and publishing advisor at Ofogh Publishing in Tehran. He is a founding member of four Iranian civil institutions dedicated to children’s literature and served for eight terms on the board of the Iranian Children’s Book Writers Association.

Hejvani was managing director and editor-in-chief of 75 issues of the quarterly Children’s and Young Adult Literature Research Journal and editor-in-chief of 96 issues of the monthly Children and Young Adult Book Review. He also spent 11 years as an editorial board member and reviewer for the peer-reviewed journal Children’s Literature Studies at Shiraz University. In 2020, he was nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (Sweden) in the category of reading promotion.