World in Our Minds…Learning from Dogs
Dear Friends,
Welcome to February’s Substack.
I hope you’ll enjoy this month’s blog World in Our Minds…Learning from Dogs. The audio version is available by clicking the link in the blog or clicking the link here for all podcasts. https://joanneleedomackerman.substack.com/podcast
Book News shares information, appearances, awards, and interviews on my latest novels Burning Distance and The Far Side of the Desert.
The Writer at Risk section this month focuses on Iranian journalist, human rights defender and Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi.
The Books to Check Out section features two republications by Thornwillow Press of long stories—Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Cellists” and E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops.”
In the Scene section you’ll find a photo relating to text from my novel Burning Distance. Words of the Month share a couple of words you may not use but might enjoy knowing.
Thank you to everyone who has come to bookstores, libraries, book clubs and online for my novels Burning Distance and The Far Side of the Desert. Word of mouth sells books so thank you for spreading the word!
If you’d like to have me speak at a venue or with a book club, click here. Thank you too for reading and sharing this free monthly Substack On the Yellow Brick Road. I hope you’ll stay in touch!
World in Our Minds…Learning from Dogs
We walk around inside our own heads, admitting into our world what we see and hear and think.
I’m sitting at a corner table in a restaurant where I start my day these days, writing for hours, sipping decaf coffee, shaping a new work. I rely on blocking out the ambient noise around me, the conversations at the other tables, even the music in the background. Except today at an adjoining table, a new, friendly host is table-hopping and has stopped to share his past and present with the diners, doing what I suspect his job description includes: making friends with the customers. But today for me, his conversation is intruding. For some reason I’m not able to block out his life and work history that he’s sharing. I want him to go away so I can return to my world which flows out as words on a page. When I’m writing, I rely on being self-centered in my own world of words until I have to join the world around me. It is a process most writers know well, taking in the world, then blocking it out long enough to reshape and craft it in words.
In the newspaper this morning—a real newspaper I’ve asked for—I read about the existential protests in Iran and also citizen protests in my own country with crackdowns on peaceful dissent, even some of the same rhetoric about “traitors.” While there are not wholesale killings in the U.S., there have been shots fired and people killed. This is not my daily world; there are no protests where I am, but I have covered protests before as a journalist. In Iran these are now hard to follow since the government has closed down the internet and communications. I rely on Iranian friends who have some direct contact with those in the country to know that the nationwide uprising may be more existential than in the past with protests in more than 100 cities among widespread citizenry—shopkeepers, students and farmers.
I can only write about those I know or know about—the writers who try to get the word out but often end in prison themselves (see Writer at Risk column this month and other months.)
We live in our minds first and then in our families, work, communities, sharing what’s in our minds, the world as we see it with others. In functioning societies, that sharing of thoughts and perspectives leads to education, commerce, friendships, productive government, but when the thoughts of others are not respected or valued, when we lose sight of the multiple, varied, millions of points of view that have to be synthesized to make up a functioning society, we become isolated, frightened and angry. Those who understand how to hold the whole together seem as rare as figures in history these days and yet as common as a child, or a dog walking down the street sniffing and welcoming everyone she meets. I have such a dog. I watch with admiration and a little awe at how willing she is to greet everyone, often sniffing them shyly until they look down and give her a smile and then a pet and she sidles closer then looks over her shoulder at me as if to say, “See, we’ve made another friend.” She lets them pet her, accepts their smiles and even gratitude for her welcoming presence.
The world is more complicated than a child’s or a dog’s affection, but I am daily reminded how much they understand and carry in their heads that we might learn from.
I’m honored that The Far Side of the Desert (Oceanview Publishing) was named a finalist in the Suspense category for the 2025 National Indie Excellence Awards. The novel was also awarded the 2025 Bronze medal in the Suspense/Thriller category by the Independent Publishers Association (IPPY) Book Awards.
Published in 2024, The Far Side of the Desert was released in paperback April, 2025. I hope you’ll order, read and enjoy. If you’ve already read the hardcover, I hope you’ll buy the paperback and give to friends!
“The Far Side of the Desert by Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a razor-sharp tale of sisters, daughters, spies, and lovers; some relatable, some who appear to be beyond redemption, and some whose acts of good or evil are much harder to tease apart. Deftly managing the tightrope between the tightly-paced geopolitical and the nuanced psychological, Leedom-Ackerman delivers a thriller that transcends genre and has stayed with me long after I read it in one breathless sitting. The Far Side of the Desert is one of my top reads this year!”
—Deborah Goodrich Royce, award-winning author of Reef Road, Ruby Falls, Finding Mrs. Ford and upcoming novel Best Boy
Burning Distance (Oceanview Publishing, 2023 and paperback in 2024) was honored by the 2024 American Book Fest International Book Awards as a Finalist in the Best Mystery/Suspense and Thriller/Adventure categories.
“Burning Distance is a double helix of a book, carefully plotted and beautifully told. It’s a spy story interwoven with a love story, and the strands fit together in a way that moves the reader effortlessly from chapter to chapter. While fiction, its narrative of the CIA and the Middle East arms trade are very close to fact. Joanne Leedom-Ackerman observes the world of American spies and Arab fixers through the eyes of a young woman who keeps asking questions about her mysterious past until she gets all the revelatory answers. A subtle and satisfying novel.”
—David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist and New York Times best-selling author of The Director, The Quantum Spy, The Phantom Orbit
Thanks to Monica Hadley and Writers Voices for the recent interview about The Far Side of the Desert. You can listen here.
Selected recordings of past events and interviews:
Interview with Monica Hadley, Writers Voices
Strategies for Living Podcast: Finding Resilience Through Story
Interview with Janeane Bernstein on NPR’s KUCI, Get the Funk Out!
Book Launch for Akram Aylisli's People and Trees with Plamen Press
Why Baldwin Matters Series, The Alan Cheuse International Writers Center
Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café in Asheville, NC
Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City with Salil Tripathi
Baum on Books on WSHU Public Radio
Interview with Anna Roins of Authorlink
Interview with Deborah Kalb
For more podcasts, videos and interviews, click here
Narges Mohammadi (Iran)
(Sources: PEN International, Human Rights Watch, BBC, The Guardian)
There are so many Iranian dissidents to be concerned about as the Iranian people protest widely against their regime, none more so than Iranian writers who have spent years in Evin Prison, notorious for detaining critics of the regime. One of the most notable is Narges Mohammadi, who has written and spoken up for human rights, particularly women’s rights, and has spent most of the past two decades as an inmate. Since 2021, Mohammadi has been serving a 13-year sentence on charges of committing “propaganda activity against the state” and “collusion against state security” which she has denied.
Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Peace, Narges Mohammadi had been released on a temporary medical leave in December. However, when she spoke at a memorial service for fellow dissident and human rights lawyer Khosro Ahkordi who was found dead in his office, the Iranian security forces forcefully and brutally detained the 53-year-old Mohammadi along with other activists.
Mohammadi was brought to an emergency department twice after being “attacked by plain clothes agents with severe and repeated baton blows to the head and neck,” according to the Narges Foundation.
According to reports from her husband Tahi Rahmani, he is worried for his wife and the others. “This is a targeted attack on democracy and the right to freedom of expression,” he told The Guardian newspaper.
There has been no comment from Iranian authorities, but they have said she was detained for making “provocative remarks” at the memorial ceremony.
Mohammadi has emphasized that she does not even know which security authority is currently detaining her and that no explanation has been given. The Narges Foundation cited Ms. Mohammadi as saying that she was accused of “co-operating with the Israeli government” and that they had made a death threat, telling her: “We will put your mother into mourning.”
In a society where women are restricted and confined, their imprisonment and torture illumine the cracks and vulnerabilities in the regime which may finally collapse on itself or into itself. It is risky to project the ultimate toppling of a 50-year-old regime, but there are those looking to the stalwart voices of dissenters, many in Evin prison who may be turned to for leadership in the future, if not in political office, then as inspirational figures. Many are women. The most renowned is Narges Mohammadi.
In February 2020 Mohammadi was served with further charges, including “spreading propaganda against the system” and “assembly and collusion with intent to take action against national security.” These charges arose from her role in staging sit-ins, conducting educational classes and “defaming” the governor of Evin prison by accusing him of torturing and assaulting her. She was handed a new sentence of 30 additional months in prison and 80 lashes. She spent months in solitary confinement and has written about its toll on prisoners, labelling it “white torture.”
In her book, White Torture, she documented the imprisonment of thirteen women, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and their shared experiences: harassment and beatings by guards, total blindfolding and denial of medical treatment.
Since January 2023, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence has brought additional charges against Mohammadi in retaliation for her activism while incarcerated, including her protesting against the government’s brutal response to protests and her speaking up against the rise in executions and violence against women in detention. Between January and June 2023, Iranian authorities initiated five new investigations into Mohammadi’s activism in prison. According to her family, she faced a total of 10 more years in prison, 150 lashes, and a 12 million Iranian Rial fine (approximately $320).
In an Open Letter October 2016, Narges Mohammadi declared: I have faith in the path I have chosen, the actions I have taken, as well as my beliefs. I am determined to make human rights a reality [in Iran] and have no regrets. If those who claim to be spreading justice are firm on their judgment against me, I am also firm on my faith and beliefs. I will not waiver under tyrannical punishments that will limit my freedom to the four walls of the prison cell. I will endure this incarceration, but I will never accept it as lawful, human or moral, and I will always speak out against this injustice.
To Take Action for Narges Mohammadi:
Urge the authorities to:
Drop charges and immediately release Narges Mohammadi
Pending release, ensure that Mohammadi is granted prompt, regular, and unrestricted access to care and other basic necessities
Send Appeals to:
Please send emails to the Iranian Embassy in in your own country.
PEN International and others welcome the long-awaited release of PEN members Ales Bialiatski (Substack October 2024) and Maksim Znak (Substack May 2024) and fellow writers after years behind bars and continues urging #Belarus to free all those still held. #FreeThemAll
Reuters Dec 13, 2025:
”Human rights campaigner Ales Bialiatski fought for decades on behalf of political prisoners in Belarus, earning the Nobel Peace Prize but paying the cost of his own freedom.
“The Nobel award in 2022 made Bialiatski a globally recognised symbol of resistance to the authoritarian rule of President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin who during his three decades in power has crushed all opposition in the former Soviet state of 9 million people.”
An attack on a writer, the shutting down of a publishing house, the torching of a newspaper reduce the space in the world where ideas can flow. Freedom of expression is vital to writers and to readers but is challenged daily around the world. Listed here are organizations whose work on human rights and in particular issues of freedom of expression I’ve been engaged with directly and indirectly over the years. Some of the organizations have broader agendas, but all have contributed to keeping space open for the individual voice.
PEN International (with its 147 centers in over 100 countries)
PEN American Center
English PEN
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
Amnesty International USA
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Article 19
Index on Censorship
Poets and Writers
Authors Guild
International Center for Journalists
Every month I receive a small, beautifully published volume from Thornwillow Press, sometimes an original by a noted author or discovered author, more often a republished gem. In November 2025 I unwrapped the story “Cellists” by Kazuo Ishiguro, originally published in his first short story collection Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall in 2009. Earlier, I had received E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops,” a dystopian science fiction story published over a hundred years ago in 1909 and remarkably prescient.
The subscription to Thornwillow Press was gifted to me by my daughter-in-law and is a gift that keeps on giving. The Press, founded in 1985 by Luke Ives Pontifell, specializes in letterpress printing, engraving and custom bookbinding and has published hundreds of titles both as collectors’ books and as the small monthly paperbacks I have received.
In Ishiguro’s Cellists a young Hungarian musician arrives in a West European town during the summer in the early days of Russian tourists and Eastern Europeans coming through the Iron Curtain. Well-schooled in his music, Tibor is patronized by an older American woman cellist who opens his mind and helps him hone his skills to the possibilities he might achieve as a musician until her life and secrets catch up with her and eventually him.
In his delicate prose and with a gentle hand, Ishiguro explores the aspirations and boundaries of the artist as a young man’s dreams and talents intersect with culture that both beckons and confines the artist.
From “Cellists”:
That summer seven years ago had been an unusually warm one, and even in this city of ours, there were times you could believe we were down on the Adriatic. We played outdoors for over four months—under the café awning. Facing out to the piazza and all the tables—and I can tell you that’s hot work, even with two or three electric fans whirring around you. But it made for a good season, plenty of tourists passing through, a lot from Germany and Austria, as well as natives fleeing the heat down on the beaches. And that was the summer we first started noticing Russians. Today you don’t think twice about Russian tourists, they were still rare enough to make you stop and stare. Their clothes were odd and they moved around like new kids at school. The first time we saw Tibor, we were between sets, refreshing ourselves at the big table the café always kept aside for us. He was sitting nearby, continually getting up and repositioning his cello case to keep it in the shade.
“Look at him,” Giancarlo said. “A Russian music student with nothing to live on. So what does he do? Decides to waste his money on coffees in the main square.”
“No doubt a fool,” Ernesto said. “But a romantic fool. Happy to starve, so long as he can sit in our square till afternoon.”
He was thin, sandy-haired and wore unfashionable spectacles—large frames that made him look like a panda. He turned up day after day, and I don’t remember how exactly It happened, but after a while we began to sit and talk with him in between sets. And sometimes if he came to the café during our evening session, we’d call him over afterwards, maybe treat him to some wine and crostini.
We soon discovered Tibor was Hungarian, not Russian, that he was probably older than he looked, because he’d already studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, then spent two years in Vienna under Oleg Petrovic…
E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops,” published in 1909, could have been written today with only the setting underground seen as science fiction. Earth’s inhabitants no longer live on the dangerous surface of the earth but live in individual rooms under the surface, governed by an omnipotent Machine which enables their lives. It provides food, communications, light, music, books, encourages reading and a world of ideas as long as the ideas have been thought before. Inhabitants are almost entirely isolated from direct contact with each other but have thousands of friends and communicate through the machine.
“’Beware of first-hand ideas!’ exclaimed one of the most advance of them. ‘First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impression produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element—direct observation.”
Forster may not have anticipated the social media and tech culture of today, but those reading his tale of Vashti and her son Kuno and their isolation from each other may pause and wonder what Forster saw in his present that so anticipated our present where contact is through a machine that connects to friends, turns on lights and delivers news and governs with apparent omnipotent wisdom until it doesn’t.
From “The Machine Stops”:
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading desk—that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh—a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.
An electric bell rang.
The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.
“I suppose I must see who it is,” she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately.
“Who is it?” she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.
But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said: “Very well. Let us talk. I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes—for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on ‘Music during the Australian Period.‘“
She touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus and the little room was plunged into darkness.
“Be quick,” she called, her irritation returning. “Be quick, Kuno; here I am in the dark wasting my time.”
But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her…
“I want you to come and see me.”
Vashti watched his face in the blue plate.
“But I can see you!” she exclaimed. “What more do you want?”
“I want to see you not through the Machine,” said Kuno. “I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.”
“Oh hush!” said his mother, vaguely shocked. “You mustn’t say anything against the Machine.”
“Why not?”
“One mustn’t.”
“You talk as if god had made the Machine,” cried the other…
Image and passage of text from my novel The Far Side of the Desert:
Monte pointed to the massive baroque and Romanesque cathedral across the square, its twin towers rising over 200 feet like giant dripping sandcastles framing the façade. “How do they know it’s the real body of the Apostle in there?” she asked.
Samantha read from the guidebook: “A hermit saw lights and heard music in the woods and found the body. Ever since, Santiago de Compostela has been the destination for pilgrims on their journeys of faith.”
“Faith in what?” Monte asked. “Even you don’t have faith in 2000-year-old bones,” Monte said.
“No, but I have faith in festivals.” Samantha smiled an easy smile. Monte frowned. “People want to believe in something larger than themselves, Monte.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean something exists.” Monte fanned herself with a folded newspaper as the sun rose above the Cathedral’s spire. She slid out of her heavy leather sandals and set her bare feet on top of them. She glanced up at the sound of a helicopter circling above.
Over the years I’ve accumulated a running list of words I haven’t known from two main sources: WordDaily and WordGenius.
Artisanal
/är-tēz-ən(ə)l/
Part of speech: adjective
relating to or characteristic of a person skilled in utilitarian art, trade, or craft, especially one requiring manual skill.
produced in limited quantities by hand or through the use of traditional methods
Examples:
“Sticking to the major touristy spots means missing out on incredible food—like world-class curry in the Spitalfields neighborhood in the East End or artisanal bites at Borough Market.”
“Her work is rooted in Italy’s artisanal tradition, particularly in Tuscany, one of the world’s most significant centers for leather production.”
Obloquy
[ob-luh-kwee]
Part of speech: noun
censure, blame, or abusive language aimed at a person or thing, especially by numerous persons or by the general public.
discredit, disgrace, or bad repute resulting from public blame, abuse, or denunciation.
Examples:
“That’s a shame, because the airline’s 11 outside directors are arguably the guiltiest of the guilty parties in the company’s recent fiasco, the most deserving of obloquy.”
“Moreover, their statements came after they had sustained public obloquy for their silence.”
I’ve spoken at bookstores, university classes, book luncheons and in-person and zoom book clubs and look forward to more ahead. I enjoy giving readings and addressing audiences in many venues and moderating discussions on a wide range of topics and most of all meeting readers.
Click here for a list of future and past public events.
Or fill out the speaking request form to schedule an event.
I like engaging with readers so if you are in a Reading Group or Book Club and read one of my books, I’m glad to be in touch by email, zoom, or when possible in person. I can also suggest discussion topics.
Fill out the reading group form here to schedule a meeting.
Congratulations on the awards for Far Side. They are well deserved. What a read it is with round-the-world action that brings international strife into touchable focus. Keep writing. This fan is enthralled.
Couldn't agree more. The way we construct our personal reality from inputs is truly insightful, making me think about consciousness as a very unike data processing system. It does make you wonder if any two beings, human or animal, ever experience the exact same 'world' given those distinct internal models.