Be Well Be Here presents our inaugural online literary event :
BWBH’s Be Brave Book Group
Each season, BWBH’s Be Brave Book Group features celebrated authors sharing conversation about their personal journeys as writers and the risks taken to craft authentic, meaningful narratives.
This summer, on Tuesday, August 25 at 7:30 pm, we feature the work of two historical novelists: Marjan Kamali (The Stationery Shop) and Whitney Scharer (The Age of Light). While a portion of the evening will be spent discussing the novels, Marjan and Whitney will also delve into their personal stories and discuss their journeys to becoming writers, the pitfalls they encountered while writing about real historical figures and events, and how to stay creative and engaged during times of crisis. Come with your questions and leave inspired!
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About THE STATIONERY SHOP: Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.When Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once. Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran. A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. Resigned, she moves on—to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England—until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century.
About THE AGE OF LIGHT: "I'd rather take a photograph than be one," Lee Miller declares after she arrives in Paris in 1929, where she soon catches the eye of the famous Surrealist Man Ray. Though he wants to use her only as a model, Lee convinces him to take her on as his assistant and teach her everything he knows. As they work together in the darkroom, their personal and professional lives become intimately entwined, changing the course of Lee's life forever.
Lee's journey of self-discovery takes her from the cabarets of bohemian Paris to the battlefields of war-torn Europe during WWII, from inventing radical new photography techniques to documenting the liberation of the concentration camps as one of the first female war correspondents. Through it all, Lee must grapple with the question of whether it's possible to stay true to herself while also fulfilling her artistic ambition--and what she will have to sacrifice to do so.
