Marvia Malik is Pakistan’s first transgender news presenter. In a DW interview, Malik says she had to work hard to break taboos and finally be accepted by a society that discriminates against transgender people.

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Kiran Nazish is the founding director for the Coalition For Women In Journalism. She established several media and tech projects at the most prestigious university in Pakistan LUMS and was a professor for International Journalism and Conflict Reporting in India at O. P. Jindal Global University. Ms. Nazish has worked with the New York Times in New York, covered conflict for many years in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Afghanistan and Mexico. Based on her global experience and insight into journalism she felt the need to build the Coalition For Women Journalists of all backgrounds

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There’s something we missed in recent media coverage of the two Pakistani stories, writes feminist writer, academic Ayesha Hasan.  

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Deutsche Welle journalist Waslat Hasrat Nazimi has been nominated for this year’s Rumi award for best international journalism. She is the first woman journalist to be nominated in this category of the Rumi prize, named after the 13th century poet, jurist, theologian and Sufi mystic Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi Rumi . Here, she shares some of her thoughts and experiences as a German-Afghan journalist.

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Anjum Hasan is a young Indian writer who won the Man Literary Prize in 2009 for her book “Neti, Neti”. Her latest book “Difficult Pleasures” has been listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. “Difficult Pleasures” is a collection of short stories in the form of a montage of characters who go about their busy lives in big, anonymous metropolitan cities – Mumbai,Bangalore,Calcutta. Anjum Hasan casts a spell on these characters and they bare their deepest, darkest emotions to the readers. There is rebellion and disappointment, love and melancholy and the reader experiences the intimate emotions of her characters. Hasan delves into the emotional spaces of the characters and bares all without any inhibitions leaving one with more questions than one had bargained for. 

DW’s WomenTalkOnline had the opportunity to speak to her:

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Marina Zaffari is a well-known face in Afghan television. Like any other intelligent woman, Zaffari was fed up of seeing the typical ‘pretty’ presenter in a political talk show, nodding at her male colleagues and saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as the situation demanded.  She opted for a different track.

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“I was born and brought up in Sopore, 50 kilometers from Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. I am reserved, a little laid-back and an abstract thinker.”

Ronaq Zahoor, the latest addition to the Women Talk Online team, talks about her life in Kashmir, the conflict, the dangers and her love for writing.

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