Cover Reveal and Q&A: The One and Only Googoosh with Azadeh Westergaard

Today’s post requires a bit of context.

Cast your mind way way back to the yesteryear of 2021. The January 6th insurrection was still new news. The U.S. rejoined the Paris Climate Accords. The U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in the world of children’s literature blogs, I revealed the cover of Azadeh Westergaard‘s delightful picture book A LIFE ELECTRIC: THE STORY OF NIKOLA TESLA in 2021.

Fast forward three years. Ms. Westergaard has a new picture book biography coming out from Viking Children’s Books on November 12th of 2024, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. THE ONE AND ONLY GOOGOOSH: IRAN’S BELOVED SUPERSTAR charts the path of a star that many Americans, like myself, have yet to learn about. Here’s how the publisher describes this book:

“The legendary Iranian singer and actress Googoosh (born Faegheh Atashin) made her stage debut at age two while performing alongside her acrobat father. By the time she reached adulthood, she was widely considered to be Iran’s first superstar. Googoosh was in the prime of her career and on the brink of international stardom, but after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, she was silenced and disappeared from public life for over twenty years. However, her fans did not forget her. And as they sought refuge around the globe, they found ways to keep her music alive.

Azadeh Westergaard has crafted an unforgettable love letter to the home she once knew in Iran and to the woman who was and still is a cultural icon—a dazzling performer known as the one and only Googoosh.”

And now, a chance to talk to this book’s author/illustrator and learn a bit more:

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Betsy Bird: Azadeh! Thanks again for answering my questions today. And congrats on creating what may be my favorite picture book bio title of the year. Like a lot of Americans, I wasn’t familiar with Googoosh and her life at all. Did you grow up with her music? And how did you get the idea for this book?

Azadeh Westergaard: I’m thrilled to speak with you again, Betsy — thank you for taking the time to put these great questions together. Googoosh was immensely popular while I was growing up in Iran. I left the country at age seven and was too young to be a mega-fan, but I definitely knew of her. I honestly can’t think of any Iranian who wouldn’t know Googoosh. Her posters, movies, and cassettes were ubiquitous in Iran and there was even a haircut named after her, the “Googooshi” — a mod pixie-cut quite popular with Iranian women in the 1970’s. 

The book idea came to me at an amusement park on the Maryland shore. Documentaries are my favorite film genre and a few years back, I had watched Googoosh, Iran’s Daughter on Kanopy. The film, released in 2000, centered around Googoosh’s disappearance from public life at age 29 after the 1979 Iranian Revolution due to the ban on female singers by the new ruling party. I was fascinated by Googoosh’s life story and loved that she started her stage career as a child star who traveled the country with her acrobat father performing in vaudeville acts.

Flash forward to a year or so later when my first book, A Life Electric: The Story of Nikola Tesla had just been sent to the printer and I was on a call with my wonderful agent, Alyssa Eisner Henkin, to brainstorm new book ideas. I was on a family beach vacation at the time and our hotel abutted an amusement park. I was chatting with Alyssa while walking around the park grounds and when she suggested writing about a historical Iranian figure for my next picture book, I happened to look up just as a family of acrobats performed their tightrope act across from me. This moment set my brain’s Rolodex whirring and the documentary images of Googoosh as a little girl, performing with her father onstage came rushing back. It struck me then that Googoosh’s life story would be a wonderful subject for a children’s picture book biography. Thankfully, Alyssa and my editor, Tamar Brazis, agreed! 

BB: Well, tell us a little more about Googoosh and her life. For those of us who have never heard of her, what are some of the highlights? And did you ever get a chance to see her perform yourself?

Azadeh: Icon. Legend. Beloved. Superstar. These are all words that come to mind when I think of Googoosh. A favorite game of mine is to listen to an Iranian-themed interview, podcast, or film and wait for the Googoosh references to show up. They always do! Googoosh is just one of those cultural icons that every Iranian knows. I believe this to be true prior to the 1979 revolution and it’s still true today. I am thrilled to have this opportunity to share Googoosh’s remarkable life story with a broader audience.

As mentioned earlier, Googoosh (born Faegheh Atashin in 1950) began as a child star. In addition to her singing career, she starred in 25 films alongside Iran’s most famous actors of the time. In addition to her natural beauty, style, and charisma, her voice conveyed a universal depth of emotion that truly resonated with listeners. By the 1970’s, Googoosh was at the prime of her career and on the brink of international stardom, but after the 1979 Iranian Revolution she was silenced and disappeared from public life for over twenty years.

Googoosh was 50 years old (!) when she was finally able to leave Iran in 2000 and return to the stage for reunion concert in Canada. She sang before an audience of over 12,000 members of the Iranian diaspora, many of whom traveled from around the world to witness her return. I highly recommend watching this video as it really captures the palpable excitement around her return to the stage. Every time I see the audience members both applauding and wiping their tears, my eyes well up.  

I personally attended my one and only Googoosh concert in 2005. My then fiancé (now husband) went to New York’s Madison Square Garden in New York City to experience Googoosh’s performance magic first-hand and we were not disappointed. I also had tickets to see her perform in New York City this past January, one of her last concerts since she’s retiring this year, but ironically, I had to miss it to meet the art deadline for this book!

BB: Aww. I was just scrolling through her Wikipedia page, and she’s had a HUGE life. How did you pick and choose the elements to include in your biography? What did you definitely want to include and what did you know you had to clip out?

Azadeh: It’s so true. Googoosh has had such a phenomenal and multifaceted life, but I knew from the start I wanted to focus solely on her singing career for this book. I felt that the cultural and political upheaval of the 1979 revolution, the subsequent ban on female singers, and Googoosh’s emotional return to the stage after her twenty-year absence would provide a resonant arc to the narrative. 

In my Author’s Note, I also share my own immigration experience and elaborate more on the different aspects of Googosh’s career and personal life.

And if you’re curious to hear her music, this solo and this duet with the Iranian singer, Martik, are two of my all-time favorites.

BB: I’d love to know a little bit about the art of the book. What medium are you working in? Did you face any particular challenges or difficulties along the way?

Azadeh: The art was created using tea-stained paper (Earl Grey, if you’re curious!) and hand-carved stamps that I block printed to create both the characters and decorative elements throughout the book. 

Since this is the first book I have both written and illustrated, I spent a couple of years just playing with materials and developing my style. The carved stamp process was incredibly time consuming and truly a labor of love — but it really defines the aesthetic of the illustrations and lends itself well to my love of pattern play, which is abundant in this book. I also incorporated paper collage, pen and ink, colored pencil, three-dimensional components, and even some hand-sewn paper elements. 

Here are some process pics:

Since the spreads are three-dimensional, they could not be scanned but had to be photographed from above by a photography studio. The completed art takes up quite a bit of space!

I am incredibly grateful to my editor, Tamar Brazis, and the designer, Opal Roengchai, for believing in this project from the start (especially since I had never illustrated a picture book before), for their spot-on art comments during the book dummy stage and beyond, and for their infinite patience and grace as we worked together to bring it to completion. It was a team effort through and through and I am thrilled with how it turned out.

BB: One of the choices you make in the book is to focus on the collective narrative of the Iranian diaspora after the 1979 Iranian Revolution alongside Googoosh’s life. When you were first writing the book was that always how you planned to write this story? Did you make any significant changes to the narrative from the first draft onward, or did you always have a clear picture in your head of how to write this out?

Azadeh: I like to write my first drafts using a writing app called Flowstate. What’s brilliant about this app is that you choose a time frame, in my case, I usually opt for 5-10 minutes, and start typing. If at any point I stop typing for more than a few seconds, everything I’ve written will start disappearing. As someone who is prone to distraction, I find it to be a great way to create a sense of urgency and focus, which instantly shuts down my inner critic so that I can get a draft on the page.

A lot of my research entailed watching YouTube interviews in Persian, which I then translated and transcribed myself. I was struck by how people spoke about Googoosh as if she belonged to them. Googoosh’s life story is inextricably entwined with the story of the Iranian people both inside and outside the country. Her music and image are like a time capsule to pre-revolutionary times and I can’t tell you how much I wept while researching this book. It wasn’t just Googoosh’s singing career that came to a halt after 1979, so did the professional lives of countless novelists, filmmakers, actors, and musicians. So many talented artists were silenced and had to rebuild their lives pursuing other professions.

I completed the manuscript during the early months of the pandemic and from the beginning found myself using the second person. This allowed for a “you” and “we” perspective and created a narrative that’s about both Googoosh and the collective story of diasporic Iranians post-1979. I then put the manuscript on hold for a couple of years while I worked on developing the look and feel I wanted for the illustrations. It wasn’t until last year that I felt ready to share the book dummy with sample final art with both Tamar and Alyssa.

BB: And Googoosh is still alive and well today so I have to ask – are you going to send her a copy of your book?

Azadeh: I absolutely plan to send Googoosh a copy of the book! The book is really a love letter to her, and I want to send her that letter!

BB: That’s what I wanted to hear. Finally, what else are you working on these days? What’s coming up next?

Azadeh: My current work-in-progress is a humorous, illustrated middle-grade featuring furry and feathered animal protagonists, a 24-hour laundromat, a roller-skating misadventure, and an impossibly long escalator.

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I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until November 12th to get your own copy of THE ONE AND ONLY GOOGOOSH, but at least you don’t have to wait until then to see the cover:

Such big thanks to Azadeh for answering all my questions today!

Filed under: Cover Reveal, Interviews