Women Hold Up Half the Sky: Women’s Writings from Across the SAARC Region

Ajeet Cour, a foremost Punjabi writer of contemporary India, has published twelve volumes of stories, five novels, two volumes of autobiography, a collection of biographical pen-sketches, a travelogue, and several creative transcreations of fiction and poetry. Her autobiography Khanabadosh, in which she portrayed her struggles with a gender-discriminating society as also with her own self, got Sahitya Akademi Award for the year 1986. Ajeet Cour is also the initiator of a literary movement which seeks to decipher and establish SAARC literature as a sub-stream with a distinctive South Asian Identity. To achieve this objective, she established the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature in 1975 to highlight the region’s art, culture and literature, and also to take up issues like peace, cooperation, women’s empowerment, social discrimination against Dalits, poverty, injustice, violation of human rights, etc. later, she established the Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature (FOSWAL) as a separate wing of the Academy dealing exclusively with SAARC literature. Under the banner of FOSWAL, she has been taking the lead in organizing SAARC Writer’s Conferences, seminars, exchange programmes and other modes of literary interaction for crystallizing the movement. She has also been disseminating the literature of the region by publishing books, anthologies, journals, etc. and also running a state-of-the-art website with a massive input in terms of the region’s representative writings.

Noor Zaheer is a writer and researcher, writing in English, Hindi and Urdu. Her important published works include My God is a Woman (novel) - Foundation of SAARC Writers Literary Award, Silent Dunes, Raging Forests (short story collection), Mere Hisse ki Roshnai - Delhi Hindi Academy Award, Surkh Karavan ke Hamsafar- Hindi (travelogue Pakistan), Ret Par Khoon- (short story collection in Urdu/Hindi), Patthar ke Sainik (plays for children-Urdu and Hindi), Aaj ke Naam (biography of well known Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz). Her recent research includes Tribal and Buddhist Oral traditions of North Western Himalayas and compilation and translation of early women writing in Urdu-four volumes of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction prose. She is the recipient of the Times Fellowship for Research; Senior Fellowship, Department of Culture, Government of India and Writer in Residence: Sahitya Academy, Delhi.

Dr. Savita Singh has her education in Jaipur and Delhi. She took her Ph.D. in Gandhian Studies from the Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Keenly involved in Gandhian Constructive Programme, she joined Gandhian Constructive Programme, she joined Gandhi Smrit and Darshan Samiti, Delhi in 1988. Her special interest lies in working amongst the women and children from the underprivileged segment. She has edited several publications of the Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti and contributed articles in journals and newspapers on Gandhi and related issues.