Farah Ahamed

The South Asia Union Summit 2026 is taking place free and live on Zoom, 13th-15th November. Farah is a member of the panel for Body as Battleground: Gender, Sexuality, Culture and Resistance, on Saturday 14th November at 10.00 AM EST, 08.30 PM IST. Come and hear the conversation. All welcome.

What does it take to imagine a South Asia where borders do not dictate solidarity, technology does not reproduce existing inequality, and women, minorities and indigenous peoples are not expected to bear the costs of political power, social prejudice and economic progress? These are among the urgent questions at the heart of the South Asia Union Summit 2026, eShe’s flagship, women-led gathering, this year under the theme Gender, Power, Resistance…

In this  article in Forbes, Dr. Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj writes about Farah’s advocacy of menstrual rights.

A dignity gap exists between policy promises and the actual experiences of menstruators. Laws eliminating taxes or mandating free school products often fail if funding is unpredictable or basic sanitation is missing. Free products are fundamental educational needs, not political favors. Ultimately, menstrual dignity needs to be transformed into a properly funded public entitlement with clear standards.

The 17th edition of the prestigious Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize takes place on Saturday, 31 October at Weston Roof Pavilion, Southbank Centre, London. Farah will be one of the readers from the Wasafiri community.

This event also includes a panel discussion on change and activism within the publishing industry, including questions on the impact of AI, freedom of speech, writers’ rights, the current translation boom, and more. Part of the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival.

Farah Ahamed has made the 2026 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist for Mother Earth. Ahamed described Mother Earth as “dust, dirt, nurturing, mother earth.” The longlist was selected from nearly 1,900 submissions.

A team of 12 writers and editors from across Canada compiled the longlist. “A geographically broad and still intimate story about connection to earth. The link with her own mother and the land was well done,” the readers said about Mother Earth.

In her short story, The Woman Destroyed, (1967) Simone de Beauvoir’s protagonist Monique utters the words, “I am no longer anything.” She says this when she feels redundant as a wife and mother; she feels she is not worth anything because the roles she fulfilled are no longer necessary to her husband and son. Through Monique, Beauvoir suggests that when a woman’s existence is defined by recognition from “others”—the consequences of withdrawal of it or failure to receive it—are an existential crisis. A woman undergoes a sense of loss. that of her ‘being’…

Artistic expression, language and shared rituals around menstruation have the potential to foster ‘harambee’, the Kenyan concept of solidarity.

At the height of the Iranian women’s revolution in September 2022, sparked by the killing of Mahsa Amini, Kurdish artist Zehra Dogan wrote Zen, Zindagi, Azadi – Women, Life, Freedom on the walls and railings outside the Berlin Embassy using a mixture of henna, hair and menstrual blood. She was arrested by the authorities and imprisoned…