A Year in the Life of an Afghan Women’s Writing Group
Thu 24 Apr 2025 | 6:00pm – 7:00pm

In August 2021, as the Taliban approached the gates of Kabul, a writing group of twenty-one women writers in Afghanistan shared the devastating changes to their lives. My Dear Kabul is their courageous collective diary of that chaos, protest and flight. Publishing on the anniversary of the Fall of Kabul the writers watch cities transform, schools close, families change and freedoms disappear. They share stories of chaos, protest and flight – and of life continuing. Check-points are a daily trial; men start behaving differently. Children can’t afford the ice-cream man’s wares; passports are near impossible to obtain. Together, their messages form a powerful chorus of resistance and solidarity.

We are humbled to be joined by Batool Haidari, Negeen Kargar and Lucy Hannah – a writer, a translator and an editor of this powerful book, which is a chorus of resistance and solidarity.

Chaired by Mary Hockaday