Majid Naficy was born in Iran in 1952. His first collection of poems in Persian, In the Tiger's Skin, was published in 1969. One year later his book of literary criticism, Poetry as a Structure, appeared. In 1971 he wrote a children's book, The Secret of Words, which won a national award in Iran.

            In the seventies, Majid was politically active against the Shah's regime; after the 1979 revolution, the new regime began to suppress the opposition, and many people, including his first wife Ezzat Tabâ'eyân and brother Sa'id, were executed. He fled Iran in 1983 and spent a year and a half in Turkey and France. Majid then settled in Los Angeles, where he lives with his son, Azad. He has since published eight collections of poems, After the Silence, Sorrow of the Border, Poems of Venice,  Twelve Poems in Love: A Narrative, Father & Son, I Write to Bring You Back, The Best of Nima and Muddy Shoes as well as two books of essays In Search of Joy: A Critique of Male-Dominated, Death-Oriented Culture in Iran,  Poetry & Politics and Twenty-Four other Essays, and his doctoral dissertation Modernism & Ideology in Persian Literature: A Return to Nature in the Poetry of Nima Yushij. He holds his doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles. Majid is currently a co-editor of Daftarhâ-ye Kanoon, a Persian literary journal published by The Iranian Writers' Association in Exile.