Zahra Joya – ‘The Vanishing Girl Of Kabul’
Tuesday 13th Oct – Artrix, Bromsgrove
What happens when half a country’s population is told to disappear?
That is the stark reality behind The Vanishing Girl of Kabul, the new book by Afghan journalist Zahra Joya, who brings her story to the stage on Tuesday 13 October.
Five years after the Taliban returned to power, Afghan women and girls have seen their freedoms and opportunities progressively stripped away. For Joya, this isn’t simply a story being reported from a distance – it is the country she comes from, and the women whose voices she has made it her mission to ensure are heard.
Now based in exile in London, Joya is the founder of Rukhshana Media, one of Afghanistan’s first news organisations dedicated to telling women’s stories. Despite the risks, she and her team continue to report from inside the country, documenting what life is really like for women living under Taliban rule.
It is work that has brought international recognition, including being named one of Time Magazine’s Women of the Year and appearing on the BBC’s 100 Women list, both in 2022, as well as receiving the U.S. Foreign Press Correspondents Association Award.
Joya is now a Fellow at Hughes Hall, Cambridge University, where she is a colleague of Sir Laurie Bristow, the last British Ambassador to Kabul. Bristow’s own experiences of the fall of Kabul provided the subject of his memorable Kabul – Final Call talk at Avoncroft Museum last summer.
But awards and titles only tell part of the story. The Vanishing Girl of Kabul is ultimately about people – and about what happens when their stories are deliberately pushed out of sight.
An opportunity to hear directly from a remarkable journalist whose work refuses to let those stories disappear.