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In this episode of 'Art Heals All Wounds', I talk with author Kiyash Monsef about his book 'Once There Was', a story that blends mythical creatures and the protagonist Marjan's quest to reconnect with her Iranian heritage solve her father’s mysterious death. Kiyash discusses the importance of mythical creatures in reflecting human traits and the significance of understanding one's cultural heritage. He shares insights into the book’s development and how his Iranian-American identity and the global pandemic influenced its themes of grief, healing, and identity. The episode delves into the nuances of writing for a broad audience, the interplay between personal and cultural narratives, and the timeless appeal of mythical beings across cultures. Additionally, Kiyash touches on the complexities of human nature and the book's exploration of grief and growing up through Marjan’s journey.
00:00 Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds: The Power of Artistic Expression
00:43 Exploring the Realm of Mythical Creatures and Persian Fairy Tales
01:44 Diving into 'Once There Was': A Tale of Heritage and Mythical Beings
03:51 Behind the Scenes with Kiyash Monsef: The Creation of a YA Masterpiece
19:33 The Essence of Mythical Creatures: A Deep Dive into Their Significance
23:39 Navigating the Human Experience: Characters, Grief, and Growth
31:32 The Personal Journey: Reconnecting with Iranian Heritage Through Storytelling
35:32 Where to Find 'Once There Was' and Closing Thoughts
Follow Kiyash!
Follow Me!
● My Instagram
● Art Heals All Wounds Website
Don't forget to go to my website and leave me YOUR story of belonging to feature on a future episode!
Buy Me a Coffee!
In this episode of 'Art Heals All Wounds', I talk with author Kiyash Monsef about his book 'Once There Was', a story that blends mythical creatures and the protagonist Marjan's quest to reconnect with her Iranian heritage solve her father’s mysterious death. Kiyash discusses the importance of mythical creatures in reflecting human traits and the significance of understanding one's cultural heritage. He shares insights into the book’s development and how his Iranian-American identity and the global pandemic influenced its themes of grief, healing, and identity. The episode delves into the nuances of writing for a broad audience, the interplay between personal and cultural narratives, and the timeless appeal of mythical beings across cultures. Additionally, Kiyash touches on the complexities of human nature and the book's exploration of grief and growing up through Marjan’s journey.
00:00 Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds: The Power of Artistic Expression
00:43 Exploring the Realm of Mythical Creatures and Persian Fairy Tales
01:44 Diving into 'Once There Was': A Tale of Heritage and Mythical Beings
03:51 Behind the Scenes with Kiyash Monsef: The Creation of a YA Masterpiece
19:33 The Essence of Mythical Creatures: A Deep Dive into Their Significance
23:39 Navigating the Human Experience: Characters, Grief, and Growth
31:32 The Personal Journey: Reconnecting with Iranian Heritage Through Storytelling
35:32 Where to Find 'Once There Was' and Closing Thoughts
Follow Kiyash!
Follow Me!
● My Instagram
● Art Heals All Wounds Website
[00:00:00] Pam Uzzell: Do you believe art can change the world? So do I! On this show. We meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Uzzell.
[00:00:43] I'm curious, do you believe in dragons? Or genies? Or unicorns? Or do you think these kinds of creatures only exist in fairy tales? What if I told you these magical animals were real? What if you actually came face to face with some of these mythical creatures? How would that change your understanding of the world?
[00:01:12] How would that change your understanding of your own place in the world? And what if you couldn't share what you now know about the world with anyone close to you? Yeki bud, yeki nabud. Once was, once wasn't in Farsi, the way that all Persian fairy tales begin, a liminal space of possibility, sort of like once upon a time in English.
[00:01:44] This phrase plays a pivotal part of the beautiful coming of age story told in Once There Was, written by Kiyash Monsef. Once There Was is about a teenage girl, Marjan, who finds herself existing in an in between space. After her mother's death, she and her father don't exactly have a close bond. There just seem to be so many secrets that her father keeps from her.
[00:02:15] Then, her father is murdered under very strange circumstances. There's so much that Marjan needs to grieve for, but she instead feels disconnected from so many things. Her Iranian heritage, her best friends with their nice homes and intact families. Why did her father keep so many secrets? If Marjan knew more It might lead to finding his killer.
[00:02:48] Little by little, her father's secret life finds Marjan and sucks her into an inherited destiny she could have never imagined. Once was, once wasn't. Marjan realizes that the bedtime stories her father told her as a little girl have been clues to who she is all along. What might Marjan discover about the world and herself if she allows herself to connect to a world between fact and fairy tale?
[00:03:34] You want to know how you can really help me keep this show going? Follow me on your favorite listening app. So easy, right? And if you really want to give the show a boost, leave me a five star rating or review. Hi, Kiyash. It's so great to have you on Art Heals All Wounds. Can you introduce yourself a little bit? Just saying your full name and what you do.
[00:04:02] Kiyash Monsef: Sure. Hi, it's a pleasure to be here. My name is Kiyash Monsef and I write books.
[00:04:09] Pam Uzzell: You do write books. You wrote an amazing book. It's classified as a young adult.
[00:04:14] Is that true?
[00:04:16] Kiyash Monsef: They call it upper middle grade, but I don't. I actually, there's a, there's a British author named S. F. Said, and I've sort of stolen a phrase from him that I love. He says, I write books for an audience which includes children, but excludes no one. And, and that's how I like to think about my audience also, because when I was a kid, I did not like to read books that were written for my age, I wanted to read.
[00:04:53] Stephen King and I wanted to read H. P. Lovecraft and, and I wanted to read Clive Barker. I mean, I guess I was kind of like [00:05:00] a horror fan. I didn't want to feel like I was being put in a box by the books that I was reading. That's kind of how I approach writing and telling stories too.
[00:05:14] Pam Uzzell: That makes a lot of sense with your book and just full disclosure, I love Young Adult.
[00:05:19] I especially loved it. My children would bring it home when they were in middle school and high school, and I would read everything once they were done with it. And it's interesting, Young Adult is, for me, a really particularly rich niche because I agree exactly what you're saying. It is written for people who are finding themselves.
[00:05:43] who are coming of age, but it excludes no one. And I felt that way about your book. So tell us the name of your book.
[00:05:50] Kiyash Monsef: The book is called Once There Was.
[00:05:53] Pam Uzzell: Once There Was. And I can give a brief synopsis or a description of this book, but if you want to give one, Either way, what would you like?
[00:06:02] Kiyash Monsef: I can certainly give a description.
[00:06:05] So it's the story of a 15 year old girl, she's Iranian American, um, and her, uh, mother passed away long ago when she was very young, and at the beginning of the book, or actually right before the beginning of the book, her father dies, suddenly, and very mysteriously. And she inherits all of his things, including his, which isn't that much, but he is a veterinarian and she inherits his clinic.
[00:06:38] And she discovers in the course of kind of taking over this clinic and doing her best to keep it going as a 15 year old who's in school and doing other things. But she discovers that he kind of had a secret side work that he was doing through this clinic, which is that he was caring for mythical creatures, creatures that should only exist in fairy tales.
[00:07:00] And then she discovers that in fact, those creatures still need help. And in particular, they need specifically her help, but she doesn't really know how to help them. And the only clues that she has are these stories that her father told her when she was a little girl. And there are stories that kind of feel like fairy tales.
[00:07:21] They sound like fairy tales, but they're not, uh, any fairy tales she's ever heard anywhere else. And they are always about sort of a connection or a relationship between a person or a group of people and one of these mythical creatures. And so these are kind of like the clues that she has to sort of guide her into starting to understand
[00:07:44] what turns out to be a pretty complex and, you know, more actually morally murky world and she has to find herself and she has to grow up pretty quickly and make some pretty big choices of right and wrong and who to trust and who to believe. And it's an adventure story and it's kind of a thriller. Um, there's also sort of a mystery of like, you know, what happened to her father and she's trying to unravel that.
[00:08:12] But it's also about grief. She grieves in a very particular way and doesn't grieve in a particular way also. And she's trying to understand herself and come to terms with the loss of her father. And also in every piece of the story, it's, it turns out it's very important for her to understand her cultural heritage as an Iranian American, which is something that she's never really felt a strong connection to before in her life.
[00:08:42] And so part of the story is about trying to make that connection for herself.
[00:08:49] Pam Uzzell: Right, right. And you start the book on what I would say is the foundational fairy tale for her. And I don't want to give very much away in terms of the exact details, but It's the clue for us as the reader as to why she seems to have this special connection with these mythical creatures and why her father did as well.
[00:09:17] I think you wrote that they were of the ancient Hyrcanian line, which isn't Hyrcanian, is that another word for Persian or
[00:09:28] Kiyash Monsef: it's actually a region in Northern Iran today There's a very old forest the Hyrcanian forest which sits sort of around the northern border of Iran And that is that is where that story that particular fairy tale is set and that is where her family originates from. So, they've come to be known as, uh, the Hyrcanian line.
[00:09:55] Pam Uzzell: Okay. I'm so curious about these fairy tales. [00:10:00] Are these original Kiyash fairy tales or are they fairy tales that you've heard or heard some version of? Because there's a very interesting structure. In English we have once upon a time, but how do all these fairy tales start off?
[00:10:17] Kiyash Monsef: You know, I think in all cultures, there is There is a phrase that is used to sort of open up the space in which a story happens.
[00:10:28] Um, and in English we have once upon a time, sort of like this temporal dislocation, right? Like some other time. And you could also be like in a faraway kingdom, in a faraway land. You see those, you see those in a lot of cultures actually, sort of spatial dislocation or temporal dislocation. Cool one recently, I think there's a Mexican one that's.
[00:10:49] This story is true as it was told to me, I'll tell it to you with the sort of underlying implication that like, it's actually a lie. Um, and we're all now going to be complicit in that lie, which is fun. That's really cool. In Farsi, which is the Persian language, I'll say, um, Persia and Iran, I use those interchangeably.
[00:11:10] It's the same place. And, I don't attach any significance one way or the other. I think some people will say, I'm Persian, and other people will say, I'm Iranian. I'm Iranian American, I say both. But anyway, in Farsi, the Persian language, the phrase that is used is, yeki bud yeki nabud. And, what that means is, once was, once wasn't.
[00:11:35] The first time I heard that phrase, I was probably about three or four years old. And my Iranian grandmother used to live in our house with us and she used to tell me stories. She did not tell me these stories. These are all original Kiyash stories. I wrote them all, but her stories always started with this phrase, Yaki bud, Yaki nabud.
[00:11:54] And this kind of amazing thing happened, for me anyway. It was, it was a very powerful invocation, I think, because like in four words, it creates this whole world once was And then it erases it, once wasn't. And so you're left completely disoriented, and you're just sort of floating in this space. It's like this sort of existential nothingness.
[00:12:16] You're, but where, what am I, where am I? But it turns out that's a really magical space in which to receive a story. You're sort of open to anything. And that is the Persian storytelling tradition. And when I decided that this was going to be a story about an Iranian American and about that, you know, finding that connection to that cultural heritage,
[00:12:41] that was pretty much the first piece of the puzzle that kind of fell into place like, ah, yes, I remember this was my experience of stories and storytelling growing up. And this is what I want this book to feel like. I want it to feel like this sitting at my grandmother's knee and hearing that phrase and then just the universe like opening up after it.
[00:13:02] That's the background behind those stories.
[00:13:05] Pam Uzzell: Well, it's a great way to open up this book, because this book is very much not exactly what you're talking about, but it's about the fact that there are these two parallel realities that exist in this world. And there are some characters in the book who get to know about these parallel realities and others who are absolutely on the outside and eventually some of the ones on the outside get to come on the inside.
[00:13:32] So it's really in all of that, too, about trying to straddle these two realities is what creates such a huge part of the conflict for Marjan is that she has to exist in both these worlds without divulging the mythical creatures world to the people who don't know about that. I want to go back though to you.
[00:14:01] What made you want to write this story about someone recovering or reconnecting to their Iranian heritage?
[00:14:11] Kiyash Monsef: So that's a fun story to talk about because I first had the idea for this book a long time ago. Um, well, I had the idea for a veterinary clinic for mythical creatures. Um, and I thought that's really cool.
[00:14:30] You know, I should work on that. And so I started, I started writing it and I started writing it at first as short stories because I'd been writing short stories for a while and that felt like a, Comfortable place to start and kind of what emerged was sort of this Sherlock Holmes collection of like these You know, loosely linked episodes.
[00:14:53] Each one would be about one creature and there'd be some recurring characters, but, you know, they're very self contained [00:15:00] and that developed and grew over time. And, you know, I started showing it to people and ended up showing it to some book editors. And I kept getting this, this note, both from people who knew me, who would be like, well, this is, you know, this is cool, but like, Why aren't you like writing a, you know, something that's more about yourself, like where, where are you in this?
[00:15:20] And then from people who didn't know me being like, well, so this is cool, but here's a question for you. Uh, you're, you have a very interesting name. Where are you from? And I kept hearing this over and over again, and I was very resistant. To the idea of talking about my own experiences as an Iranian American, for a number of reasons, partly it was, it felt scary to do that just on a personal level, but also, you know, it felt scary to be speaking for a large group of people and telling a story on behalf of
[00:16:00] a large group of people and not wanting to get it wrong, you know, wanting to get it right and not really being sure that I could or that I had the authority to do that. And I think that's a big part of my experience of being Iranian American is it's like nobody questions that I am Iranian American.
[00:16:19] You know, I can go into a room with a bunch of Iranians and they know my dad's from Iran and nobody says you're not Iranian. And I can walk into a, you know, a room of Americans and nobody says you're not American. But growing up in particular, I never quite felt as American as my American friends, and I definitely did not feel as Iranian as the Iranian people that we knew.
[00:16:44] And so I think the result of that, even much later in my life, was this sort of discomfort of not feeling like I had the authority to tell this kind of story because I wasn't enough of this or that. But you know, finally, after hearing that note, uh, enough times. And this is a, that also, uh, just as an aside, as a writer, as an artist, if you hear the same note three times, that is the note to pay attention to.
[00:17:12] Uh, so finally, after hearing this enough times, I was like, okay, I'm going to put aside all of my insecurities about this, and I'm just going to, just going to open my mind to it and see what happens. And literally the first thing that happened was. I kind of had this very vivid memory of going down into the little room on the bottom floor of our house where my grandmother lived and hearing these stories and hearing this phrase, yeki bud, yeki nabud, and just what a visceral effect that had on me as like as a small child.
[00:17:42] And it was this aha moment. And from there, many other pieces fell like right into place. But I mean, that was literally that moment. I was like, this is it. This is the, this is the feeling of the whole story. This is the glue. And when I actually sat down to write it, it was, and it really, it made everything else flow very naturally.
[00:18:02] So yeah, it was a long journey for me to feel like I could do this, but then kind of when I opened my mind and my heart to it, it was a very swift, the book came together very quickly after that.
[00:18:17] Pam Uzzell: That's so interesting. I also think the thing that you did is that you, more than having disjointed stories about this veterinary clinic for mythical creatures, you really raised the stakes.
[00:18:33] And in so many ways, you mentioned earlier, there's this murder mystery around her father. There are so many issues of trust. Even as a reader, when I was reading it, anytime there's a murder mystery, you start eyeing all the characters like, Oh, who might be behind this? And it's such a surprise at the end.
[00:18:58] Someone very, and let's not say what it is, but someone very close to her who is part of a mythical world in a way that she never, ever knew and neither did we. It's really wonderful and then you go back and you realize the little hints that were there. So I love that so, so much, but I think raising these stakes of like who murdered her father, but then also the stakes around these mythical creatures, we become very, very attached and invested in their wellbeing.
[00:19:33] I would love for you to talk about, in your mind at least, what is the importance of the mythical creatures and caring for them.
[00:19:46] Kiyash Monsef: I don't think anyone's ever asked me that exact question before. I think that the creatures all embody something that is that is deeply human [00:20:00] and so I think I think the active caring for them is in the way that Marjan does which is very much through a kind of empathy that she has is at its core it's intended to be a very human act and it's a very compassionate thing and so I think that in terms of telling the story like that's sort of what those relationships mean to me is that they're all sort of embodying these very human traits, whether it's, you know, whether it's like honor and loyalty or whether it's, you know, ambition and hunger and, or just like the will to survive that's in there too. Mythical creatures, obviously these are very iconic creatures in sort of the global, I would say, like collective imagination, you know, there's a, there's unicorns, there's griffins.
[00:20:55] These are, you know, they're very recognizable figures and they go back in stories and mythology. They go back thousands of years and why I was drawn to them and why I was kind of inspired to try to tell this kind of a story about them is because I think they've always had this really human component to them.
[00:21:20] That's part of their tradition. And that's part of why they have endured for so long. Is there something about them that just keeps speaking to people and maybe it's not the same thing today as it was 2000 years ago, or 3000 years ago, but maybe it is, you know, I don't know, but I think in some cases maybe it actually is.
[00:21:42] But also I think these creatures get reinvented within different cultures within different eras. And as a storyteller, that's kind of what I wanted to do too, is to sort of like take these ideas, take these really enduring themes and motifs and play with them. And, you know, in some cases, Yes, reinvent them, very much reinvent them.
[00:22:06] In other cases, like very much lean into the traditions that already exist and really try to like amplify them and explore them. So Marjan's care of these creatures and her interactions with these creatures are also kind of about touching that deep tradition of these creatures being passed down as, you know, these ideas being passed down over generations, across cultures, across borders, across languages.
[00:22:35] And so I think that's part of the, the interplay with her and the creatures as well.
[00:22:41] Pam Uzzell: Right. And I think it's really important to think about that not all of these creatures are warm and fuzzy and cuddly. There's one that I would say is maybe our inner psychopath that is really a little bit scary. Some of the other ones are also a bit threatening, but they're not scary, but this one is scary.
[00:23:03] And speaking of which, I love the different characters, I think if you live in the Bay Area, especially if you live in and around Berkeley, a lot of these characters are so recognizable. But the one that I loved was the very acquisitive tech billionaire who is going to save the universe first by destroying it. And it's just like wow that sounds somehow familiar
[00:23:33] I'm wondering if you want to say anything about the human characters who are in this book.
[00:23:39] Kiyash Monsef: Yeah, I do. So there's a you know there's this cast of mythical creatures that is sort of spread out across the pages of the book. But most of the action of the story is not, is not around mythical creatures. Most of it is actually Marjan's interactions with the people, some of whom are, you know, connected to these creatures in various ways,
[00:24:08] and some of them who are just part of her life. And as I wrote and rewrote this story and kind of came to care more and more about Marjan, it really became important to me to have her have a community around her of people who cared and looked out for her because she's doing dangerous things and she's,
[00:24:30] she's living more or less on her own. She has a legal guardian, whom I also very much, uh, I adore. It's a very unconventional, uh, guardianship, probably not strictly above board as far as these things go. But I really like this character, who's, she's a small role. She shows up a few times, but she kind of does for Marjan in many ways, what Marjan does for these creatures.
[00:24:55] And she kind of like looks out for her and, and just makes her life a little softer where it's, [00:25:00] you know, there's, there's some very hard edges to it. And she has friends too, and some of her friends have some understanding of the world that she is discovering, and others don't, and there's this tension there of there's these people who care for her, but she can't really be her whole self with them, and some of them she can be more open with, and those friendships are really powerful, I think, and they make me, as somebody crafting the story, it made me care more for Marjan to have someone like Malloran, who's this, uh, runaway teenage witch, um, who, uh, comes to be her roommate, basically, but that was a friendship that really, really grew as I wrote it and wrote it and found more, you know, moments for them to have and where they're looking out for each other.
[00:25:58] And sometimes it's Malloran looking out for Marjan and sometimes it's the other way around. And so there's this kind of constellation in her life of of people who care. Um, and so it's not all adversarial and, and threatening. And I mean, the relationships are challenging. They're all challenging in different ways.
[00:26:19] They're not all dangerous. Yeah. And as you said, there are some more dubious characters. There's some very, uh, very deliberately, there's no clear, 100 percent that's the villain throughout the book. You know, you could make a case that any number of people are the villain, but really none of them is the big bad and there's, you know, there is a climactic action scene, but even there, I think that there's some ambiguity about whether this person deserves the crown of being like the most evil, are they evil?
[00:26:56] Are they broken? Are they what, you know, it's, there's a gray area because I think that's, you know, I think that's how people are. I think it's very rare that somebody steps up and, and is a pure villain. I think people do bad things, um, for any number of reasons. And I think that if you're looking at the world with an open mind and an open heart, you can see the layers of good,
[00:27:24] and I don't even want to say good and evil, because I think that just make that oversimplifies it. But I think that you can. see that it's a gradient that we all exist on. And we all, you know, we all do things that are honorable and then, you know, maybe we do things that are not, but we try our best. And so I kind of wanted to reflect sort of that, that nature of humanity in the, uh, in the constellation of characters that she encounters.
[00:27:52] Pam Uzzell: Right. And I think that what you're talking about, this gradient of humanity and people's qualities is what makes a really good young adult book and opens it up to readers of all ages, because that is really a developmental step. Whereas if you're reading something for children, it's very clearly good, evil, good, bad, nice, not nice.
[00:28:18] And I love that about this. And also it kept, as the reader, it just kept me guessing, too. And I was always wondering, too, like, who can she trust? Who can she trust? And just speaking of Malloran, Malloran, I think, is maybe my favorite secondary character in this book. So I'm glad that you added her. She, in so many ways, I think emotionally, she's a lifesaver for Marjan, who's pretty isolated at the beginning of the book.
[00:28:46] One of the quests for Marjan as a character is around this issue of how she grieves. And you talked about she grieves in some ways like this and like this, but that is part of the quest for her as a character. I think that that is what adds to this multidimensional plotline in this book and these cross genres, because it is a book about grief, and it is very much about the importance of grieving to our humanity.
[00:29:24] I'm wondering, at what point did you realize that that was a key portion of this story?
[00:29:32] Kiyash Monsef: I think that the, the seed was planted. really from the very first little short story that I wrote. And as I got to know Marjan better, and as I got to understand the world of the story better, I would say that sort of the key pieces of that particular thread fell into place very early [00:30:00] on, but I think that the power that it has in the story was something that I, I don't think you can just sit down and write that in a draft.
[00:30:11] I think it was something that happened kind of, it kind of accrued over the course of, you know, several years. And You know, I will say the book really became what it is during the pandemic. So there was a lot of sort of ambient grief and trauma that informed what the book became. And it grew over the course of the writing of the book, but.
[00:30:39] Yeah, I mean, I would say like coming out of the pandemic and, you know, being in the pandemic. And I think that added, and I couldn't tell you exactly what, you know, where it added, but I think, I think it did. And I think it's, you know, I think it's there actually in a lot of the sort of themes of the book.
[00:30:58] I mean, healing and compassion and care. I think all of that, all of those themes became stronger, I think, as a result of, you know, You know, what we all lived through and being kind of in that space, you know, as I was working on it.
[00:31:14] Pam Uzzell: That makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, you talked about growing up, this idea that you're between these two worlds, which I've heard other people who are the hyphen American, the something American talk about as well.
[00:31:32] I'm wondering if writing this book impacted at all your feelings or if this is just going to be the place where you are, but maybe it feels a more comfortable place. I'm really curious about that.
[00:31:46] Kiyash Monsef: I think it definitely, writing this book has sort of changed my, my feelings on, and my sort of relationship to my Iranian heritage, which is really quite wonderful actually.
[00:31:57] I think, well, first of all, it has given me the confidence to, to talk about it. And I would never like deny my Iranian heritage, but it's given me a lot more confidence with which to, to speak about it. And to, to speak, I want to say on behalf of anybody, but to own my experience of it. And to say, this is an authentic experience and this is a valid experience, you know, and whether it's everyone's experience.
[00:32:26] I don't know, but it's valid. Another piece of it is the research that I did and I had to do research. You know, I, you know, I, I have some experiences that I can draw on, but I am not an expert in Persian mythology. And so when I made this choice, this is what I'm going to do. I had to go back and I had to read the mythology and I had to look for the, you know, look for the things that I could use to tell this story and to my utter delight, there are a lot of connections, you know, that these creatures, these mythical creatures, well, you know, ancient Persia kind of sits, um, at one end of the Silk Road.
[00:33:04] And so it's kind of this, it was always this sort of convergence of cultures and ideas. So a lot of these creatures either traveled through or they kind of even started in ancient Persia. The one I love to talk about is the griffin, which, you know, when I wrote, when I first started writing that creature, I had this very English, you know, heraldic, um, like as you would see on a banner or a family crest, that was sort of where I was coming from thinking about this.
[00:33:31] And it's, it lives in this very sort of English environment, but the English did not invent the Griffin at all. They were inspired by the ancient Greeks, you know, and they, they saw this motif and they loved it and they brought it into their heraldry. But the Greeks didn't invent it either. And this is the one that blows my mind because they took it from the Persians, whom they were not friends with.
[00:33:53] They were fighting with the Persians constantly. They were at war. But at the same time that they were like at war with this, with this other culture, they were being inspired by it. And they were taking these, these themes and these motifs, and they were incorporating them into their own stories and their own mythologies.
[00:34:11] Uh, and I think that's, I mean, I, that, that's amazing to me that these creatures, these monsters are kind of, they're so, the idea of them is so powerful that it can transcend these language barriers. They can cross battlefields, you know, and, uh, they can resituate themselves in this completely new culture and get carried forward.
[00:34:34] And so it was really a privilege for me in telling this story. To kind of be able to go through the history and, and say, look, we did this, the Persians, we brought this, you know, this is our creature and we can not to like take it away from anybody else, but to celebrate these contributions that were made by, by Persian artists and Persian storytellers to the collective [00:35:00] imagination of the world.
[00:35:02] Pam Uzzell: Yeah. It works so well in the story. And I think you do such a great job of painting the outsider, the insider, and feeling like you're in between and not making it be in just one way, like all the different things that a person may need to connect in order to feel comfortable in their own skin. I think that's done so well in this book.
[00:35:31] Kiyash Monsef: Thank you.
[00:35:32] Pam Uzzell: So, Kiyash, where can people find out more about you and about this book? Where can they buy the book?
[00:35:42] Kiyash Monsef: You can buy Once There Was at most bookstores, Amazon, bookshop. org, uh, if you like audio books, um, Libris FM or Audible. And if you want to find out more about me, I have a website. It's kiyash.
[00:35:58] com, which is K I Y A S H dot com.
[00:36:03] Pam Uzzell: Thank you so much for being on the show. I really love this book. I kind of tore through it because it was such an engrossing read, so thanks for talking about it and answering some of these questions for me.
[00:36:17] Kiyash Monsef: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.
[00:36:19] Pam Uzzell: You're listening to Art Heals All Wounds.
[00:36:48] Thank you, Kiyash Monsef, for being on the show today to talk about his book, Once There Was. This book has deservedly won so many awards and accolades. If you or someone you know is an animal lover or a reader of young adult novels, and I count myself as both of those, I can't recommend this book enough.
[00:37:09] I'll leave info in the show notes for where you can find out more about this book and about Kiyash. Do you have a story about art and creativity you'd like to share? I'd love to hear it. Leave me a voicemail and tell me about it. I'll share your voicemail on the show. Just go to my website and ArtHealsAllWoundsPodcast.
[00:37:29] com and you'll see the button to click and leave a voicemail. And if you want to support Art Heals All Wounds, you can also go to my website and click on buy me a coffee. Every bit of support helps me to continue producing this show. Thanks for listening. The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa and Lobo Loco.
[00:37:54] You also heard music by Sergei Quadrado. This podcast was edited by Iva Hristova.