Khakpour is working on a novel and a collection of short stories.

Question: What are you working on now?

Khakpour:    I’m working on a novel and a collection of short stories.  The collection of short stories has a lot to do with the Iranian exile community, again through sort of a humorous perspective.  Then my second novel I just sort of came to recently, and that will be sort of my sophomore daughters after my debut sons.  But I am going to sort of force myself into considering the female psyche this time around.  And the book is, I think, for the most part, going to be about the network of wives and daughters of a certain greatest terrorist of all time in the context of a sort of floating harem.  I’ll say that.  I was very interested in the women that came forth in the press.  And in fact there were only women that came forth in the press really admitting to connections with Osama bin Laden.  And I’ve been reading a lot of their interviews.  It’s quite a cast of characters, and all of them seem quite larger than life.  So I was very sort of inspired by that.  And I was inspired by their courage – for some of them the courage.  Some of them were just totally over the top, and who knows what sort of connection they really had.  But I was inspired by the press.  Sometimes it’s not what actually has happened that I find inspirational, but how the press . . . the filter . . . the press’s filter on events and renderings of public figures.  So even if these . . . if their stories are not accurate or real even, they give a good story.  And I’m very excited by these women.