Laleh Khadivi was born in Esfahan, Iran. Her debut novel, The Age of Orphans, received the Whiting Award for Fiction, the Barnes and Nobles Discover New Writers Award and an Emory Fiction Fellowship.

Her debut documentary film 900 WOMEN aired on A&E and premiered at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. She has worked as director, producer and cinematographer of documentary films since 1999. Her fiction and non-fiction can be found in The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, VQR, The Sun and other publications. She is the recipient of a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Grant and a 2016 Pushcart Prize for her story Wanderlust. She lives in Northern California.