Ahmadi, a native of Kabul, Afghanistan, came to the United States after graduating high school in the early 1980s. He earned a B.A. in political and social sciences from California State University, Hayward (now East Bay) in 1987 and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1997. Ahmadi’s primary areas of interest include classical and modern Persian literature, literary theory and criticism, and cultural history.