Write Assamese

Promoting writing in translation from Assamese in Assam

This project is a collaboration between Untold in the UK and BEE Books in Kolkata, to promote Indian literature in translation. The project focuses on Assam, with unpublished Assamese writers, in translation.

The translation ecosystem in India suffers from a lack of training opportunities. At the same time, aspiring fiction writers are often marginalised due to circumstance, language, and lack of opportunities to develop their work. This project carves out a space for consistent, quality translations emerging from Assam to generate new fiction for international audiences.

Write Afghanistan

Working with women creative writers in Afghanistan

For our project Write Afghanistan, our team of international editors and translators work with local women writers to develop their creative writing, connect them to one another, share their stories with readers in their own languages, and reach new global audiences in translation.

We believe a region’s upheaval cannot be understood without local, and particularly women’s, perspectives.

One output from Write Afghanistan is My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women, the first collection of its kind, published by MacLehose Press in February 2022.

New fiction by Afghan women

Stories by 18 writers from the Write Afghanistan project will be published in the UK on 17 February 2022 in My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women (MacLehose Press).

My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird is a landmark collection: the first anthology of short fiction by Afghan women. Eighteen writers tell stories that are both unique and universal – stories of family, work, childhood, friendship, war, gender identity and cultural traditions.

With an Introduction by Lyse Doucet and an Afterword by Lucy Hannah.