I am interested in our freedom to exist. In contexts that I am curious about, I want to explore the question of being born and being. I want to explore this in the context of people in my home country of Iran and animals in an anthropocentric world. My goal is to write a novel that explores these ideas through the lives of characters living in Iran. What is it like to be a female gynecologist working in the desert in a small, patriarchal community? What is it like to be ten and have your report card torn up by your older brother and told you can't go to school because you're a girl? What is it like to be kept in a cage smaller than the length of your body to be sold for slaughter or experimentation? Is intelligence the moral measure of an animal's value? These are questions I do not know I could ever, ever answer or honour by attempting to answer. But they are some of the questions that urge my curiosity and my literary interests. It is possible that if/when I finish my first draft, the direction of my story will have diverged from this initial trajectory. I just know my general interests and I know should get started writing.