Join sisters and co-authors Nimra and Manahil Bandukwala, with moderator Mariam Pirbhai, as they discuss their book Women Wide Awake, a collection of stories, poems, and visual art exploring folklore from the region of Sindh, Pakistan. This multi-genre book features stories of women, witches, sea monsters, and mystical saints, accompanied by art and poetry.
Presented in partnership with Words Worth Books in celebration of 40 years.
About Women Wide Awake:
Women Wide Awake is a collection of stories, poems, and visual art exploring folklore from the region of Sindh, Pakistan. This multi-genre book features stories of women, witches, sea monsters, and mystical saints, accompanied by art and poetry. Collectively they explore themes that have resonated with people for centuries—acts of courage, strength, defiance, and love. Two sisters build a labyrinthine palace to test their suitors . . . a woman swims across a treacherous river at night to meet her forbidden lover . . . a bartendress makes a grave mistake. These folktales have persisted across generations and national boundaries through ritual storytelling and song. The sculptures were created using reclaimed materials: sari fabric, wedding invitations, flowers, shells, and animal bones.
About the Authors:
Manahil Bandukwala is the author of Heliotropia (Brick Books 2024) and Monument (Brick Books 2022, shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award). With her sister Nimra Bandukwala, she co-created Reth aur Reghistan, a multidisciplinary project that interprets Pakistani folklore through contemporary media. With the project, she has published Women Wide Awake (Mawenzi House 2023). She is the recipient of arts grants from the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the City of Ottawa. In 2023, she was selected as a Writer's Trust of Canada Rising Star by Shani Mootoo. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.
Nimra Bandukwala (she/her) is a visual artist and maker of crafts using foraged and found materials. She creates paints and dyes with plants and rocks, while exploring stories and histories of these materials. She was born and raised in Karachi and is now settled on the traditional territories of the Attawandaron, Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples in so-called Cambridge, Ontario. She has facilitated community-engaged workshops with folks of all ages and abilities in schools and community-based settings. She co-leads Reth aur Reghistan, a project that explores folklore from Sindh, with her sister Manahil. Her work can be found on her website, nimrabandukwala.com and on Instagram @nimrabandukwala.art.
About the Moderator:
Mariam Pirbhai is the award-winning author of two works of fiction, Isolated Incident and Outside People and Other Stories, and a recent book of creative nonfiction, Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging. She is professor of English at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the author of several academic studies on the literatures of the global South Asian diaspora. Her academic and creative work is written from a decolonial lens and driven by social justice issues impacting migrant and diasporic communities. Pirbhai is the daughter of Pakistani immigrants to Canada. She lives and works in Waterloo, Ontario.
Programmer: Ikhlas
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