What Lights My Feminist Fire?

Leila Aboulela’s sixth novel, River Spirit, was published in March 2023 and described by The New York Times as ‘Dazzling… a novel of war, love, faith, womanhood and – crucially – the tussle over truth and public narratives’. Leila’s previous novels are Bird Summons, The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Her short story collection Elsewhere, Home, won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year. Leila is the first-ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, and her work has been translated into fifteen languages. She is Honorary Professor of the WORD center at the University of Aberdeen.

Rachel Louise Snyder is an American journalist, writer, and professor. She covers domestic violence and previously worked as a foreign correspondent for the public radio program Marketplace, and also contributed to All Things Considered and This American Life. A story she reported for This American Life won an Overseas Press Award, along with Ira Glass and Sarah Koenig. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Slate. She has lived in London, Cambodia, and Washington, DC and is originally from Chicago.

Florence Schechter is the director and founder of the Vagina Museum. Her background is in science communication and she has a degree in biochemistry from the University of Birmingham. Since it opened in 2019 in Camden Market, the Vagina Museum has been covered in international news from The New York Times to The Lancet to TIME magazine to even appearing in a joke in SNL’s Weekend Update. Her debut book, “V: An empowering celebration of the vulva and vagina” is being published by Penguin Random House in March 2023.

Anita Sethi was born in Manchester, where her love of nature first flourished in wild urban spaces. Her first book, I Belong Here: a Journey Along the Backbone of Britain received outstanding reviews and was nominated for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, the Portico Prize, Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize and Great Outdoors Award. Her writing has also appeared in anthologies and she has written for several newspapers and magazines.

Malu Halasa is a Jordanian Filipina American writer and editor based in London. She is the editor of seven anthologies on Middle Eastern art and culture, including two on Iran: Transit Tehran: Young Iran and Its Inspirations and Kaveh Golestan: Recording the Truth in Iran, with Hengameh Golestan. Halasa has written for The Guardian, Financial Times and Times Literary Supplement. She was previously an editor at the Prince Claus Fund in Amsterdam, Editor-at-Large for Portal 9 in Beirut, Lebanon, and a founding editor of Tank Magazine in London. She is currently Literary Editor for Middle Eastern arts magazine, the Markaz Review.

Rosie Wilby is an award-winning comedian, author and podcaster who has appeared many times on BBC Radio 4 programmes including Woman’s Hour, Saturday Live and Four Thought. Her latest book, The Breakup Monologues, is based on her acclaimed podcast of the same name and takes an inclusive and optimistic look at heartbreak.