Etan Basseri was born and raised in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia with a mix of Sephardic and Ashke­nazi Jew­ish cus­toms. He now lives in Seat­tle with his wife and chil­dren. A Turk­ish Rosh Hashanah is his sec­ond book. His crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed first book, A Per­sian Passover, was an Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries Hol­i­day High­lights sug­gest­ed title.