Nafas Reading Series: Babek Lakghomi and Sara Kachelman, Thursday, December 11, 2025, 7pm

Please join us on Thursday, December 11, 2025, at 7pm at Counterpath (7935 East 14th Ave.) for readings and performances by Babak Lakghomi and Sara Kachelman, current residents at Nafas in Denver.

Babak will read from the manuscript of a novel in progress, “I Was Here All Along.” It is a coming-of-age novel and is narrated in fragments. The narrator’s parents are leftist revolutionaries following the Islamic Iranian revolution and are marginalized within the society and their own families. The novel uses the personal lens of the young narrator focusing on the narrator’s family to examine a society in the transition of war and revolution.

Sara will read from her dissertation-in-progress, a picaresque novel about a young woman who goes abroad to a secretive plastic surgery clinic in Eastern Europe to replicate the face of her mother, a former soap opera actress of the 90s. 

Nafas Reading Series, curated by writer and translator poupeh missaghi, hosted by Nafas Residency and Counterpath, brings together guests at the residency with local writers and artists for presentations of their work and conversation.

Nafas Residency is a new solitary residency in Denver, CO, offering space to writers, translators, artists, and humanities scholars. Priority is given to marginalized communities and/or projects. The space is pay-as-you-wish and has a simple application process so that it can stay accessible to a wide range of our community. You can find more info about the residency at: https://nafasresidency.org

Babak Lakghomi is the author of South (Dundurn Press, 2023) and Floating Notes (Tyrant Books, 2018). His writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, NOON, The Cincinnati Review, Fence, and Southwest Review, among other places. Babak was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and writes in Toronto.

Sara Kachelman is a PhD student and instructor of Literary Arts at the University of Denver, where she edits prose for Denver Quarterly.  Her fiction has appeared in Chicago Review, Black Warrior Review, and Diagram. She is writing a novel and a short story collection.