PROVIDENCE — Moniro Ravanipour and Shahriar Mandanipour write. But as Iranians, they do so in fear — of censorship, persecution and, even, death.

So they’ve come to Brown. They’re fellows at the Watson Institute’s International Writers Project. They’re not seeking refuge, just respite.

“I have to leave my country to find power,” Ravanipour says. “I become weak there. But I am a strong woman. The situation is very, very hard.”

The situation has been hard for a long time. Now it’s getting worse.

Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian government has banned many books once deemed acceptable by previous administrations, and has otherwise strangled free speech.

“It is not easy to be writer, a poet or a translator in Iran,” Mandanipour says. “There are many problems for us there. It makes us sad.”

This is the story of two Iranian writers: Ravanipour, 54, and Mandanipour, 50. But their story is essentially the same, as it is for most Iranian writers: hardship.

Ravanipour, a novelist who has published eight books in her homeland, came to Providence with her husband and their 10-year-old son in January. This was around the time the Iranian government ordered many of her books — some in their third, fourth and fifth editions — removed from bookstores. “I hate this situation,” she says. “I hate it. This is not humanity.”

Ravanipour is not a political writer. She’s a fiction writer, telling stories about families and villages and life in general. “I love my country,” she says. “I love our history. I love our language. But I can’t tolerate the situation.”

In Iran, writers submit manuscripts to publishers, which then send them to the government’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for publication approval.

Sometimes the answer’s no. Sometime’s the answer’s yes, provided the publisher accepts certain editorial changes: removing certain words or passages, or changing certain aspects of a character’s appearance.

One of Ravanipour’s friends created an illustrated children’s book featuring a nurturing, heavy-set, large-bosom woman.

“They said, ‘No. The breasts are too big. Make them smaller.’ ”

The book was published after the main character received literary breast-reduction surgery.

Ravanipour laughs about this, which is rare. More often, government censorship makes her cry.

“We are used to living in fear and anxiety,” she says. “We are in an ocean of anxiety.”

Several years ago, Ravanipour attended a literary conference in Berlin, where Islamic fundamentalists protested the participation of Iranian writers. When Ravanipour returned home, police officers came to her home, broke down her door and took all of her writing notes, which were returned 10 months later.

After that, Ravanipour visited Paris to give readings. Government officials gave her permission to go, and, unbeknownst to her, went with her, spying on her during her trip. When she returned home late one night, she came home to a subpoena to go to court first thing in the morning.

“I didn’t do anything! I read a story. Reading a story isn’t so bad. I didn’t kill anybody.”

Ravanipour didn’t know what would happen the next day, and feared the worst. She wanted to wake her young son, hug him and kiss him, say hello, and, perhaps, goodbye.

“My husband said, ‘I will tell him that you didn’t come back (from Paris). Maybe tomorrow you’ll go away for six months, or maybe forever.’ ”

Ravanipour says she had been jailed before, 25 years ago, shortly after government officials killed her brother. But she can’t bring herself to say more about this experience. It’s still too painful.

On that night she returned from Paris, Ravanipour restrained herself. She did not wake her son up in his bed. Instead, she went to her own bed, and cried.

The next day, Ravanipour spent the entire day in court, answering questions about her trip and her work.

“It was for nothing,” she says. “It was for writing.”

In June, Ravanipour intends to return to Iran with her family; then come back, and go back.

“If you are a writer, a responsible writer, you have to be in your country,” she says. “We can’t stay always here. And we can’t stay always there. If I stay here, I will lose my roots. If I stay there, I will go mad.”

Mandanipour, a writer of fiction books and short stories and also essays, came to Providence a year ago with his wife and their two children. Previously, he had written several books and edited a monthly literary journal in Iran, where he joined what was for a time an underground organization: the Association of Iranian Writers. In 1994, the Association publicly declared its purpose was not political, but artistic.

The Iranian government didn’t care, according to Mandanipour, and through its official newspapers attacked the writers.

“They called us spies of the United States,” he says.

Shortly after that, Mandanipour says, the killings began. Writers and translators were being assassinated.

“Officially, there were five killings. We guess there have been more than 40.”

It doesn’t take much, Mandanipour says, to annoy government officials. Just write.

“The problem is not that you are writing something political or that you are writing a love story,” he says. “The problem is that you are writing something that is not official.”

Yes, Mandanipour says, Iranian writers may write about love in their Islamic society, but only in an officially approved way.

“There are many words that are forbidden, such as ‘kiss’ and ‘breast’,” he says. “The leg of a woman you also couldn’t write about.”

Censorship in Iran, Mandanipour says, goes back thousands of years, to the reign of kings. That, he says, is the country’s tradition, not freedom of speech.

“Censorship is so familiar. It is the lifestyle.”

It’s convention. When the government doesn’t admonish, Mandanipour says, the public will.

“If I wrote a sexy story, which I would never do, there would be some protest in the culture, maybe from my neighbor.”

In the time Mandanipour has been here, he has lectured in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and California about censorship in Iran. He considers it his responsibility to inform people what’s happening in his country, which is so different than this country.

“Since I came here, I touched light. I touched freedom.”

But in June, Mandanipour will take his family back to Iran, which he half jokingly calls “the dark side.”

“If all Iranian writers and all Iranian intellectuals leave our country, who will remain? I’m thinking of our responsibility. I’m not talking about being a political man, or doing something great for our country. I’m talking about being there.”