Mehdi Meshgini earned a BSc and MSc in organic chemistry from Oregon State University, and a PhD in pulp and paper chemistry from the University of Washington. After his first academic job at Organ State University as a research chemist in environmental pollution, he has been teaching chemistry in Vancouver for many years.

While his professional career has been in the sciences, his true passion has always been literature, particularly poetry. An avid reader of both Iranian and Western literatures, he has given numerous talks on poets like Rumi, Hafez, Omar Khayyam, and Parvin Etesami; written translations of the poet William Blake into Farsi; and has a forthcoming follow-up comparing the works of Rumi and Blake. He has also put out a collection of his own poetry, a novel Nina which is being adapted into a film, and the newly published non-fiction book Murder in Evin about Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi.