Lailee Bakhtiar

Lailee Bakhtiar

Lailee McNair Bakhtiar just finished her latest novel, "They Shake the Desert Sands." Former host of "Authors and Critics", a television series on PBS, McNair - Bakhtiar is a poet and novelist who was born in Washington, D.C.. She recently spoke at The Gulf and The Globe Conference (http://www.usna.edu/MiddleEast/Draft%20Schedule%20of%20Events%20-%2010%20Dec%202008.pdf) at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. She was invited to speak at the United Nations in New York at the UNESCO conference in 2000, on her expedition to the Zagros Mountains (Feb 25, 2000 "Making It Happen: Women and the Culture of Peace" (UNESCO/World Peace www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/2000schedule.htm ). She is the daughter of a Persian mother from the Bakhtiar tribe and a father from four generations of the United States Naval Academy, Frederick Vallette McNair, III. She learned the craft of writing at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where she studied French literature and received a B.A. in French. She received a MAT, Masters in Teaching French, from the College of Notre Dame de Namur, Belmont, CA. As the co founder and a chairman of the Jack London Writers’ Conference, a President of the California Writers’ Club-Peninsula Branch; seven years a producer of an NBC-KRON San Francisco community program, For Heaven’s Sake, and; nine years a host and producer of Authors and Critics on PBS-KCSM TV in San Mateo, Ca (the program was offered nationally to PBS in 2000) and contributor to Accent TV in Fairfax, Va, to Comcast Cable TV in Annapolis, MD, she continues with interviews and speeches today for television, educational institutions and civic groups.