The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club

How do you cheer up a woman who has spent hours cleaning prison toilets with a broken mop? The secret is in a tres leches cake. In Iran’s prisons, women endure horrors: they are beaten, interrogated, and humiliated in a thousand ways. Even a whisper to a fellow inmate can be punished. Yet – in spite of anything and everything – they resist: they bake. They console each other, cry together, dance together.

Sepideh Gholian, in prison since 2018, bakes scones, pumpkin pies and madeleines, alongside traditional Iranian sweets. The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club is a call to stand up for Woman, Life, Freedom by a woman still fighting for a free Iran.