This episode our featured book segment is brought to you by Ultimo Press and we are very excited to be talking to Pirooz Jafari about his debut novel Forty Nights.
- Forty Nights will be launched at the Bowery Theatre in St. Albans on Wednesday 6 July 2022. It’s free but you need to book.
- Pirooz will also be at Geelong Library — event timing TBC
- Pirooz recommends There Was Still Love by Favell Parrett
Born in Iran, Pirooz Jafari migrated to Australia more than two decades ago as an ambitious photographer. His experience of witnessing violations of human rights of every imaginable kind throughout his childhood, adolescence and young adult life in Iran ignited a passion in him to pursue legal studies and Pirooz graduated as a lawyer in Australia in the summer of 2003. Pirooz has since worked in various community-based organisations and statutory bodies. Forty Nights is his first literary fiction novel.
Kate and Katherine discuss:
- ‘Going fallow’ from Vicki Hastrich’s book of essays Night Fishing
- Kate watching The Rescue and being reminded of cave diving in Robert Macfarlane’s Underland
- John Hughes, Plagiarism and a Literary Award Gone to The Dogs by John Purcell
- 10 Australian Literary Scandals by Thuy On (via ArtsHub)
- The Miles Franklin Shortlist (listen to our interviews with Alice Pung and Michelle de Kretser)
- Something Blue by Alex Sarkis
- Forty Nights by Pirooz Jafari
- The Writer Laid Bare by Lee Kofman and her advice to ‘write what makes you blush’
- Desire: A Reckoning by Jessie Cole
- Leigh Sales interviewing herself
- Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey (audiobook version)
- Gouldian Finch spotted near Darwin
Upcoming events
Stories to Save the World: the new wave of climate fiction with Alice Robinson, Kate Mildenhall & Lee Kofman. Thursday 21st July, 7pm. Doncaster Library. Free
Kate and Katherine at Antipodes Bookshop. Thursday August 4th, 6-8pm. Tickets here.
Kate is running a Publishing and Pitching workshop for the Peninsula Writer’s Club Sunday 7th August, 10am-3pm.
The First Time podcast 