A warm welcome on a cold night from the good ladies of Zonta Club Northern Beaches. Great to speak about forced marriage in Australia, and to answer many interesting questions.
A dark Avalon Beach alleyway was the portal to an evening of northern beaches Azra-ness. In conversation with Libby Armstrong of Beachside Bookshop, I talked about what inspired me to write Promising Azra, and also about all the help I received along the way.
It was standing room only at the official launch of Promising Azra at Kinokuniya in Sydney. Dr Eman Sharobeem from SBS kicked things off by explaining the context for the story, as well as her involvement in my initial research. I then acknowledged the assistance of my many readers and helpers, reciting a list of their (mostly helpful) suggestions about chemistry, mixed martial arts, caterpillars, Pakistani food, Islam, roll-call times, and dogs.
Promising Azra will be officially launched by Dr Eman Sharobeem, whose work with Sydney teenagers inspired the book.
The event is at Kinokuniya in Sydney on Thursday 28 July 2016, and If you’d like to come along, please RSVP to the book store. More details here.
Beachside Bookshop at Avalon on Sydney’s northern beaches is hosting a literary event at the Sneaky Grind on Friday 19 August 2016. Bookseller Libby Armstrong will chat with Helen about the writing of Promising Azra, as well as the research behind it. For more details see the flyer. RSVP essential.
In Leicester I attended Karma Nirvana’s Women Empowerment Roadshow, and met my hero, Jasvinder Sanghera. As you can see, we swapped books, and I’m holding Shame, her own story of escaping a forced marriage.
Advance Reading Copies of Promising Azra have just been printed for the book reps, as the date for the Real Thing edges closer… Books in store 27 July 2016! Stay tuned for details of the Sydney launch.
Island is a strange word, with all sorts of conflicting notions attached to it. Retreat, relaxation and restoration. Incarceration, abandonment and isolation. The spelling is also a trick; an invitation to homophonous tampering.
“Greetings from…” played with the possibilities of the sound and/or the transcription of the word ‘island’, and what sorts of postcards you might send from such a place.
In 2015 I spent a month in residence at Arteles Creative Center in Finland. During that time I worked on a series of poems based on recognisably similar words from the related Finno-Ugric languages of Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian.
