Shokoofeh Azar

As a journalist in Iran, covering stories about Iranian social and human rights issues, Shokoofeh Azar had a mastery of words. But when she arrived in Australia as an adult, she spoke no English. Eight years later, she graduated with a Bachelor of Communications (Honours) from Deakin. She’s now working on her third novel.

Shokoofeh's work as a journalist in Iran was important but perilous, resulting in her being jailed three times. On advice from her family, who feared for her life, she embarked on a long and dangerous journey. First she went to Turkey, then Indonesia and eventually a refugee camp on Christmas Island before being granted asylum in Australia in 2011.

After originally settling in Perth she eventually moved to Geelong, learning English as an adult. She quickly acquired the language skills for admission into the honours year of Deakin’s online Bachelor of Communication (Honours), using her Iranian studies and career as prior learning.

She found the transition from English in the community to university level frustrating and challenging. ‘English academic language is very different from the colloquial language. I had to get to know this language and use it properly during only one year in the honours course’. But, she says, ‘language barriers aside, I enjoyed studying online and being able to manage my own time. Everyone at Deakin was very helpful, positive and encouraging’.

‘I always wanted to be a writer and grew up writing and reading as much as I could’ Shokoofeh says. Along with her work as a journalist, she had written a children’s book and a short stories collection in Iran.

Written in Farsi, Shokoofeh’s debut novel was The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree. It has been translated into 13 languages and was shortlisted for many literary awards, including the 2020 International Booker Prize, the prestigious prize for books translated into English.

‘I started the novel a few months after being released from the asylum seekers’ camp,’ she says.

The novel is set in Iran in the decade following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Shokoofeh saw this novel as a way to express her emotion as someone who had lived in Iran for 40 years under the oppression of the regime, and to express the richness of the culture that she experienced. ‘Language and writing was my only tool to express myself. The novel is like everything that I knew about everything.’

Shokoofeh’s second novel, The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen, was published in June 2025 across six countries. She is already working on her next book.

In addition to writing, she is a visual artist whose paintings blend traditional Iranian forms with abstraction and symbolism. She has been featured in several solo and group exhibitions across Australia.

Shokoofeh feels a strong connection with traditional and classic Iranian literature. This has influenced her style of writing, allowing her to deal with the deep themes explored in her writing in a novel way.

‘Studying mythological texts gave me the idea that magical realism literature is rooted in ancient literature and thoughts. Supernatural themes are very popular in Iranian culture, and magic realism provides a natural connection between traditional and modern literature. It’s the best style of writing for expressing emotion, allowing me to describe a feeling with many different images’, says Shokoofeh.

‘The Persian language, which is about four thousand years old, is one of the few remaining ancient languages in the world. It deserves to have a voice in the world. As an Iranian writer, I consider myself indebted to this rich culture’, says Shokoofeh.

‘Those who read only the authors of a particular language are at risk of being behind the flow of thought and literature in the world. In Iran, we value translators and put their names on the cover of the book, under the author's name. In this way, we respect the translator’s efforts and emphasise that literature and thought are borderless.’

When asked to provide advice to aspiring fiction writers, Shokoofeh says, ‘A fiction author, in my opinion, is not someone who only has storytelling skills. Storytelling skills are just a prerequisite. A fiction writer is a thinker, a creator of beauty, an analyst, a psychoanalyst and a pioneer. To achieve this, one must train the mind, heart and soul to observe, listen, feel and understand as profoundly as possible. You have to have the courage to live differently. If we cannot think and feel differently, we cannot write differently. 

In a word, being a fiction writer, to me, means learning how to look at ourselves and the world in a unique way. As Joseph Campbell says ‘follow your bliss”.'