Trigger Warning: This post contains mention of sexual assault. There was an excerpt of Saints and Misfits by SK Ali before the book was published in Entertainment Weekly. It  read: “I stand and cringe at the sucking sound as my swimsuit sticks to me, all four yards of the spandex-Lycra blend of it. Waterfalls gush […]

The past year has been tumultuous for international politics. Citizens of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union (a move usually termed “Brexit”);  Donald Trump became the president of the United States, despite his attacks on liberal media and unfiltered islamophobia, racism and sexism; Saudi women gained the right to drive in the […]

Last month, Waterstones Book Store in London hosted Muslim Women Speak, “a micro-festival of interactive sessions curated, chaired and presented exclusively by Muslim women.” The festival was curated by Zeba Talkhani and was designed to let Muslim women speak about their own experiences in the publishing and writing industry in the UK. Shereen Malherbe spoke […]

…However else the fiction functions, it fills you with the sound of crows chirping, alive alive alive. But that’s temporary too. Tell my story, begs the past, as if it was a prayer for an imagined life or a life that’s better than the life you live -For Brothers of the Dragon by Terrance Hayes […]

I remember once when I was in third grade, I was assigned a worksheet to familiarize myself with the structure of an atlas. I found pages of maps of the world. Much like anyone else does when they stumble upon a map, I automatically looked for the city of Atlanta, where I lived and called […]