Ladane Nasseri is a journalist, writer and nonfiction instructor.
Ladane led Iran coverage for Bloomberg from the regional headquarters in Dubai after spending six years as the company’s Tehran-based correspondent. In her decade and a half at Bloomberg, she covered Iran’s politics, economy and society under three successive presidents, multiple rounds of nuclear negotiations leading to the historic 2015 Iran deal and through local uprisings and mass protests. She has written extensively about Iran’s domestic politics, foreign policy, energy industry and the impact of international sanctions on the Iranian economy and people while also covering the wider Middle East.
Ladane (pronounced LA-dan) has been based in and/or reported from Tehran, Beirut, Muscat, Dubai, London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt, Zurich, Geneva, New York and Washington D.C.
A frequent commentator on Bloomberg TV & radio, she has moderated panels for the Atlantic Council, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia 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, U.K.’s Telegraph, France’s Libération and many others. Her literary writing has been published in magazines such as McSweeney’s, Catapult and Electric Literature.
She is a 2023 MacDowell fellow and the 2021-2022 Nonfiction Fellow For Emerging Writers at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Her work has also received support from Blue Mountain Center, the New York State Summer Writing Institute and Writing by Writers.
She has taught creative writing to young boys from underserved neighborhoods in New York City and now serves as a nonfiction instructor at Lighthouse where she teaches literature of facts, personal essays and elements of journalism and oral history.
Ladane 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 delving into 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 Persian, French and English.
Ladane trained in Ashtanga vinyasa yoga, meditation 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)