The Life of a Journalist

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I was the Times bestseller on Saturday. And so I am my I am my own wild stream. It's been an interesting week. But it hasn't always happened to round writers. You know, you've been told in the past that they don't sell and it's not true. I don't sell who's going to read this book. The reason I did the things I did is because I thought my life was over. Yes, I think I must have done.

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May.

'I am my childhood’s wildest dream,’ says Saima Mir. This episode is about the process of getting there, not just the determination and hard work, but also the intangibles: the beliefs, ambitions and understandings that you don’t even know how to articulate, but which hold you up on a decades-long journey to becoming.

In this conversation, the journalist and bestselling novelist talks about shame, failure, the experience of being gossiped about - but also the inner strength and family support that allowed her to reinvent herself after leaving her first two husbands. Saima came late to journalism, but forged a successful career on TV and in print before writing her genre-changing (or will it be genre-defining?) novel, The Khan. Here, she surveys that pathway to this place, and how it built her iconic character, Jia Khan.

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