*For the Sun After Long Nights – The Story of Iran’s Women-led Uprising

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LONGLISTED FOR THE USA 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION*

” A person who fights, knows that revolutions will take a long time, but she does not fail. Standing for freedom is more beautiful than freedom itself. The person who fights is yesterday’s child. She knows that if she doesn’t taste freedom, today’s children will. A person who fights knows that revolutions will last, but she will not fail”. para 2 p.xv

IN SEPTEMBER 2022, in response to the death of Mahsa Jîna Amini in police custody, after being arrested and beaten for not wearing her hijab properly, thousands of Iranians – mostly women – took to the streets in one of the country’s largest uprisings in decades. The uprising was known as the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

Despite the threat of imprisonment or death for her work as a journalist, Fatemeh Jamalpour joined the throngs of people fighting to topple Iran’s religious extremist regime. Meanwhile, Nilo Tabrizy was covering the protests from New York, knowing that spotlighting the brutality of the Iranian government meant she would not be able to safely return to her birth country.

Though they had only met once, united by sisterhood and shared purpose, Nilo and Fatemeh corresponded constantly as they worked to shed light on what was happening on the ground.

“For the Sun After Long Nights” is their extraordinary and deeply moving chronicle of the spirit and legacy of this historic movement, as well as the history, geopolitics and influences that led to this pivotal moment.

Nilo Tabrizy is now a reporter for the Washington Post’s visual forensics team. Formerly, Nilo worked for the New York Times as a video journalist, where she covered Iran, race and policing, and abortion access.

Fatemah Jamalpour is a feminist freelance journalist banned from working in Iran by the Ministry of Intelligence. She has contributed to The Sunday Times, The Paris Review, and the Los Angeles Times and previously worked with BBC World News in London and Shargh newspaper in Tehran.