Boffins Books is delighted to be the bookseller for PEN Perth hosting Behrouz Boochani in person for the PEN Perth Annual Lecture 2023, in acknowledgement of the International Day of the Imprisioned Writer.
He will be joined in conversation with award-winning translator, Omid Tofighian and academic, Anne Surma. Together, they will discuss defiance, resistance, displacement, the act of writing freedom and asking the questions: What does it mean to bear journalistic witness? What is the power of poetics, collaboration and writing for freedom?
Behrouz Boochani is an award-winning Kurdish–Iranian writer, journalist, scholar, cultural advocate and film-maker. His memoir No Friend But the Mountains (Pan Macmillan 2018, trans. Omid Tofighian) was written during his seven years of incarceration by the Australian government in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island prison. The book was famously written one WhatsApp text at a time. His new book, Freedom, Only Freedom, was published by Bloomsbury in November 2022.
Omid Tofighian is an award-winning lecturer, researcher and community advocate. His publications include Myth and Philosophy in Platonic Dialogues, and translation of No Friend But the Mountains and Freedom, Only Freedom.
Anne Surma is an academic, editor, and writer, with an abiding interest in refugees writing about their experiences as well as public writing about refugees. Anne will lead the conversation.
Baden Offord AO, PEN Perth member, is a writer, human rights scholar and activist who will MC the event.
Books can be purchased, and Behrouz and Omid will be available for book signings.
