Articles

"I survived; I know this to be a fact. Still, there are moments when survival feels too simple a word for the distance between the life I was certain would end and the one I suddenly found myself continuing. Sometimes I cannot tell whether I came close to death and lived, or whether some part of me crossed into it and was sent back."

"Born in Bashkortostan and raised between languages and identities, Gulnaz confronts what it means to be Russian in a country that has long demanded its minorities become something else: "There is no such thing as a pure identity, least of all in a country where it is rewritten several times a century. All of it has already soaked into me, and I'm not going to pick any of it out."

"Five years after the Taliban’s return to power, Roya reflects on breaking the silence imposed on her. Once an engineering student dreaming of designing Afghanistan’s first skyscraper, now confined to her home, literature becomes a place where imagination resists prohibition and women’s voices endure despite all attempts to silence them."

"I am standing here to share my story, but in truth, it is the story of a war-torn country. It is the story of young people who watched their dreams vanish into the rubble of destruction. But most importantly, it is the story of vulnerable, yet incredibly resilient communities."

"Time for Indigenous peoples is not linear. It is an overlapping spiral where the past, present and future are happening all at once. It is called the Everywhen. Indigenous writers can imagine the apocalypse because our Ancestors lived through it."

"It is impossible not to rebel against such an injustice being done to someone who loves life and living as much as you do dad. But I am no longer rebelling; I am being patient. Because in this struggle, I know that in the end, the good will prevail."

"When I became a mother, I did not imagine seeing my child's smile would open portal-like, into a nonstop reel of rushed obituaries to young children in Gaza, or horrifying clips of teenagers in their Levi’s being marched out of their high schools or homes, tackled to the ground in the streets of USA by masked agents."

"We do need one another - even when we disagree. We have to acknowledge our sameness... Because in just a few weeks' time, it's as if global tectonic plates shifted under our feet and we've gone past a point of no return."

"Palestinian-Ukrainian peace activist and author Zoya Miari shares her experience attending the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025 and how it reminded her of the impact we can have on the world around us."