Mahbod Seraji was born in Bandar Anzali on October 18, 1956 and came to America in May 1976 to study Civil Engineering. But it wasn’t long after his arrival that upheaval and turmoil swept his country as the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979 setting off a series of events leading to the Iran Hostage Crisis that lasted 444 days, and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran — and Mahbod was forced to change his plans. He continued his education at the University of Iowa until 1989 where he received his Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate degrees. In his interview on his website Mahbod claims to remain a humble but stubbornly hopeful Iowa Hawkeyes basketball fan. While a student at Iowa, Mahbod edited Football films for Hayden Fry's teams in the late 1980s.

Seraji started his professional career at Motorola, and over the next 20 years held senior positions at companies such as Arthur Andersen, Forum Corporation, PeopleSoft Inc., Chiron Corporation, and Juniper Networks. Currently, he works as an independent management consultant in the San Francisco Bay area.

Seraji’s debut novel Rooftops of Tehran is a coming of age novel that examines the human cost of political repression was published by New American Library, an imprint of Penguin Group, in May 2009. Rooftops of Tehran was the final selection for Villanova University's One Book Program and Broward College’s wRites of Spring 2010 Literary Festival. Rooftops of Tehran was also voted as one of top 25 bookclub favorites of 2009. . San Francisco Chronicle chose Rooftops of Tehran as one top 50 notable books of Bay Area in 2009 .

List of Persian poets and authors

List of Iranian writers