CYRUS COPELAND
was an adolescent in Tehran when his father Max was imprisoned and and tried as a CIA spy. It was the dawn of the Islamic revolution and Iran’s deeply conflicted relationship with America. Unable to find a lawyer to defend her husband, Max’s wife Shahin represented him before the revolutionary tribunals––becoming the first female lawyer in the Islamic republic. Thirty-five years later, their son Cyrus embarked on a quest to discover if the charges against his father were true. Had he really been an intelligence operative––or a man in the wrong place at the wrong time? OFF THE RADAR was the result of his quest and it won Copeland the Chautauqua Prize.
Upon returning stateside in1980, Cyrus attended Haverford College and Villanova University, then went on to get his MBA from Cornell––launching a career on Madison Avenue that would span more than a decade. When his father died, Cyrus delivered Max's eulogy. Inspired by the experience, he went on to publish a book of eulogies of our cultural heroes, FAREWELL, GODSPEED: The Greatest Eulogies of Our Time, leading to an improbable incarnation as a speaker on the funeral director circuit.
Cyrus enjoys traveling extensively, talking about the art of remembrance, and his own experiences and perceptions of Iran. He has appeared on TV, NPR, Voice of America and has written about his experiences for The New York Times, the Boston Globe, Slate, and the Huffington Post. A commanding speaker with a bi-cultural understanding of the challenges we face, Copeland is known for his ability to draw aside the curtain and talk about the Iran no one knows.
A longtime resident of Manhattan, Cyrus enjoys traveling the world and counts Thailand, Nepal, Bali, Europe, and South America as notches on his travel belt. He is currently at work on a religious travel memoir.
