Sharjah African Literature Festival 2026 discusses feminist writing

Sharjah, 18 January / WAM / The session “Feminist Writing and Preserving Memory” at the Sharjah African Literature Festival today highlighted the role of feminist writing as an effective cultural space for expressing social transformations and documenting individual and collective memory, in addition to its ability to transfer women’s experiences to the general literary scene.

The two speakers at the session, the Emirati writer Nadia Al-Najjar and the Rwandan writer Scholastic Mukasonga, confirmed that the presence of female voices in literature in the Emirates and Africa came as a result of long paths of learning and experience, and the contributions of the diversity of the issues raised and the specificity of the creative voice of each writer, in addition to the widening opportunities for publishing, translation, and literary recognition in consolidating writing as a tool for cultural influence and building awareness.

Writer Nadia Al-Najjar confirmed that the Emirati literary scene has witnessed, in recent years, a remarkable presence of female writers in the field of novels, with the works of a number of them reaching advanced lists in Arab literary awards, which reflects the maturity of the experience and the widening of its spread, noting that Emirati women were writing in various literary genres, especially novels and short stories.

For her part, writer Scholastic Mukasonga confirmed that women’s voices in African literature came as a result of a long process of cultural transformation, self-learning, and writing, which was not a common practice among women in many African societies, and that their entry into this field represented a transition from oral expression within the family to presence in the public literary space.

She also emphasized that African women were historically custodians of memory within society and that this role has moved in modern times from the oral story to the written text. Through literature, women have begun to document their experiences, convey their vision of the world, and participate in shaping cultural awareness, benefiting from the expansion of opportunities for education, publishing, and translation.

She pointed out that the presence of women in African literature has witnessed clear growth, whether in terms of the number of female writers or the spread of their works globally, and she saw that literature has today become one of the most important means that have enabled African women to be visible, heard, and active in the global cultural scene.

In a related context, the festival activities witnessed a poetry meeting that brought together an elite group of male and female poets from the Emirates and Africa in an evening titled “Poems Without Borders,” which presented a literary experience open to cultural convergence and the exchange of voices. They presented poems whose themes were immigration, heritage, and imagination in a poetic dialogue that transcended geography and language and made poetry a shared space for human expression and a bridge linking experiences, memory, and feelings.

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