Batool Haidari and Naeema Ghani in conversation with Lucy Hannah

In August 2021, as the Taliban approached the gates of Kabul, twenty-one women writers messaged their WhatsApp group. They asked if everyone was safe. Over the next year, in that makeshift online refuge, they kept writing.

My Dear Kabul is their collective diary: a year of checkpoints and closed schools, of protest and flight, of life continuing under the most extreme clampdown on female freedom in living memory. The Guardian called it “fascinatingly detailed and fiercely brave.” Ali Smith said its courage is momentous.

The book exists because of Untold Narratives, a development programme for writers structurally marginalised by community or conflict. Founded by Lucy Hannah, Untold has spent years working with Afghan women writers to develop their craft, build networks, and bring their stories to new audiences. This is exactly the kind of work Chapters was built to stand behind.

Lucy Hannah sits down with contributors Batool Haidari and Naeema Ghani to talk about what it means to write under those conditions, and why it matters that we read it.

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