Women want to tell their stories, urgently and purposefully. Nowhere was this more evident on a bright midweek morning in February than at ...
Women want to tell their stories, urgently and purposefully. Nowhere was this more evident on a bright midweek morning in February than at a hall full of women (and a few good men) at The Lalit hotel where the Delhi edition of the annual Women Writers’ Fest was held in February. A recurring question seemed to dominate many discussions here: How best can one write about experiences of domesticity, about marital violence, about changing identities, and find enough readers for these stories?
One of the themes most in demand at the festival has always been how to get published and how to market oneself, confirmed Shaili Chopra, founder of Women Writers’ Fest and SheThePeople.TV. The festival has expanded beyond the metros to become a 15 cities-a-year travelling literary event in its fourth year, adding Hyderabad, Lucknow, Bhopal, Patna, Chandigarh, Nagpur, Surat and Jaipur to the roster.
Voices of protest
“There are writers everywhere, and what we believe in, is going to them and engaging with them in their own environment,” Chopra says; the emphasis is on efforts to “mainstream female writing” and explore subjects like gender, self-care, mental health, business, environment, climate, cities in motion, voices of dissent, poetry, spoken word, romance, erotica, relationships,...
