Ladane Nasseri is a transnational writer, journalist and educator.
Ladane led Bloomberg’s Iran coverage from the regional headquarters in Dubai after spending six years as its Tehran-based correspondent. In her decade and a half at Bloomberg News, she covered Iran’s politics, economy and society under three successive presidents and multiple rounds of nuclear negotiations leading to the historic 2015 Iran deal.
She has written extensively about Iran’s domestic politics, foreign policy, energy industry, social movements and the impact of international sanctions on the lives of Iranians. She has reported in real-time on bombings, arrests, local uprisings and mass protests in the Middle East and written analytical pieces that have been cited by leading think tanks.
Ladane (pronounced LA-dan) has been based in or reported from Tehran, Beirut, Muscat, Dubai, London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt, Zurich, Geneva, New York, Washington D.C. and elsewhere.
A frequent commentator on Bloomberg TV & radio, she has also moderated panels ranging from current affairs to culture for the Atlantic Council, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, Yale University, the Europe-Iran forum in Zurich, and the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai.
Ladane’s reporting has appeared in a host of international outlets including The New York Times, LA Times, Businessweek, Newsweek, The Nation, WNYC Public Radio, PBS Frontline, Monocle Radio, U.K.’s Telegraph, France’s Libération. Her literary writing has been published in McSweeney’s, Electric Literature and other magazines.
Presently, Ladane teaches critical thinking and writing at New York University in Abu Dhabi. In recent years, she has also taught literature of facts, narrative nonfiction, journalism, oral history, the reported essay and memoir writing in U.S. literary organizations such as Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop, Narratively Academy and Hugo House. She has also served as a creative writing teacher to underprivileged youth in New York City.
Ladane is a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. She is a 2023 MacDowell fellow and the 2021-2022 Nonfiction Fellow For Emerging Writers at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Her work has received support from Blue Mountain Center, the New York State Summer Writing Institute and Writing by Writers.
She is interested in humans’ relationship with the self, with others and with place. She explores this through reporting and writing on themes of identity, belonging, migration, displacement, and attachment to land. She is drawn to complexity — human and political — and enjoys asking questions and researching concepts not easily defined.
Raised between Paris and Tehran, Ladane completed her bachelors in London and Marseilles. She holds a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University and a Master of Fine Arts in literary nonfiction from The New School in New York. She is fluent in French, English and Persian.
Ladane trained in Ashtanga yoga, meditation, pranayama, and mindfulness over several years of studies in India, receiving a teaching certificate in 2014. She is a student of Zen.
(Photo credit: Matthew Lloyd)