My Dear Kabul: A Year in the Life of an Afghan Women's Writing Group

In August 2021, as the Taliban approached the gates of Kabul, twenty-one women writers in Afghanistan messaged their WhatsApp group chat: they asked what news others had heard and if everyone was safe.

These women had been brought together as a writing group and were about to publish their first collection of short stories. Some were students, some newly married, one was a grandmother; all were afraid of what was now to come. Over the next year, in their makeshift online refuge, they shared the day-to-day reality of life after the Taliban retook Afghanistan. This is their collective diary, forming a powerful chorus of resistance and solidarity.