Publication of “Women in Print: Voices from Pakistan”

Our Editor in Chief was at the Karachi Biennale KB24.
Here she talks about the experience.

Two years ago, Madeline Clements of the Teesside University in England got in touch with a few publishers and editors who had been interviewed by Maham Khan and Sadia Akhtar for a project. I was one of them.

Madeline’s idea was to get together women publishers and editors in Pakistan under the aegis of an umbrella organization. After that first meeting at The Last Word bookstore, where Madeline, myself and Niilofur Farrukh, Managing Trustee of the Karachi Biennale, were all present, a constructive outreach to many other women editors and publishers was initiated and PAPWE was born… the Pakistan Association of Women Publishers and Editors.  Eventually, it was decided that Teesside University would fund a project whereby four researchers, two from Karachi and two from Lahore, would archive parts o f publications run by women—publications which for one reason or another had had to fold up. The four researchers chosen were Hira Azmat and Mahnoor Jalal from Lahore, and Taazeen Hussain and Veera Rustomji from Karachi.

Niilofur Farrukh readily incorporated a session dedicated to the researchers’ work. They would present a brief esquisse of their research under the able mentorship of Madeliene, with a more detailed digital handbook to be added to the websites of The Aleph Review and the Karachi Biannale (to be sure PAWPE members like myself and Niilofur were part of this journey and provided input and ideas, but the main person guiding the researchers and doing the organizational work was Madeline).