In 2018, British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert was sentenced to 10 years in an Iranian jail on unsubstantiated charges of espionage. For the first time at a public event, Moore-Gilbert discusses her new memoir The Uncaged Sky, which reveals the intimate details of her incredible story.
The Uncaged Sky recounts the full details of the 804 days Moore-Gilbert spent imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin and Qarchak prisons. Subjected to unrelenting interrogation and physically and psychologically drained by solitary confinement, she fostered covert friendships with other prisoners by speaking through air vents and hiding secret letters in the hallway she was led down, blindfolded, for an hour each day. She was finally released in a high-stakes prisoner swap negotiated by the Australian government, bringing into the open the complex machinations of global politics in which she had found herself trapped. Written with vivid and insightful immediacy, this is a remarkably clear-eyed reflection on the power of hope, resistance and what it means to be free.
To celebrate the release of The Uncaged Sky, Moore-Gilbert joined broadcaster and PEN Melbourne Ambassador Sami Shah in conversation at the Wheeler Centre.
The bookseller for this event was Neighbourhood Books.
Recorded on 29 March 2022.