Join us this October 4th for a conversation on character writing, and what it takes to write uncontainable women who defy stereotypes and challenge ideas about race, class, sexuality, religiousity, and so much more.
Sadiya Ansari is a Pakistani Canadian journalist based in London. She's the author of the bestselling memoir "In Exile: Rupture, Reunion, and My Grandmother's Secret Life." Her work has appeared in the Guardian, VICE, Refinery29, Maclean’s, The Walrus, and the Globe and Mail, among others. She has reported from Pakistan, Indonesia, Germany, Spain, Poland and Kenya, among other places. Her work has changed legislation and won awards.
IN EXILE (2024):
In a deeply personal investigation, award-winning journalist Sadiya Ansari takes us across three continents and back a century as she seeks the truth behind a family secret. Why did her grandmother Tahira abandon her seven children to follow a man from Karachi to a tiny village in Punjab? And though she eventually left him, Tahira remained estranged from her children for nearly two decades. Who was she in those years when she was no longer a wife or mother? For Sadiya herself, uninterested in marriage and children, the question begets another: What space is available to women who defy cultural expectations?
Through her inquiry, Sadiya discovers what her daadi's life was like during that separation and she confronts difficult historical truths: the pervasiveness of child marriage, how Partition made refugees of millions of families like hers, and how the national freedoms achieved in 1947 did not extend to women’s lives. She sees the threads of this history woven through each generation after, and finds an unexpected sense of belonging in a culture that, at first blush, shuns women for wanting lives of their own.
Priya Guns is a writer and actor. Her debut novel, ‘Your Driver is Waiting’ was reviewed by The LA Times, Toronto Star, The Guardian, and The New York Times. It was acknowledged as one of Shondaland’s best debut novels of 2023 and Vogue’s 'the best of LGBTQ books of 2023 so far'. Priya’s latest short story, ‘Pegging Trudeau’ will be published in Somesuch Stories’ TENSION edition in October 2024.
YOUR DRIVER IS WAITING (2022):
Damani is tired. Every day she cares for her mum, drives ride shares to pay the bills and is angry at a world that promised her more before spitting her out. The city is alive with protests, fighting for people like her, but Damani can barely afford – literally – to pay attention.
That is until the summer she meets Jolene and life opens up. Jolene seems like she could be the perfect girlfriend – attentive, attractive, an ally – and their chemistry is undeniable. Jolene’s done the reading, she goes to every protest, she has all the right answers. So maybe Damani can look past the one thing that’s holding her back: Jolene is rich. And not only rich, but white, too. But just as their romance intensifies, just as Damani learns to trust, Jolene does something unforgivable, setting off a truly explosive chain of events.