Know Her Words
A PIWWC Initiative
Know Her Words is a PEN International Women Writers Committee Initiative to celebrate the best women’s writing from around the world.
We invite all our PEN Centres to share the titles of the best books written by the women of their country.
This project will generate a global selection of works by women, offering a curated list from which to select extraordinary writing by women to encourage cross-cultural understanding and appreciation of the issues, stories, and imaginative breadth of each other’s places.
It is our hope that from this seed list, we may inspire the creation of intra-and cross-Centre Book Clubs, further Reading Lists, Author presentations—and more!
Instructions
- With members from your PEN center or its WWC, nominate 10 works by women that you consider excellent.
- Provide author, title, a very brief synopsis (2 or three sentences), genre, the year the work was published, photo of the author (if available), a cover image (if available) and where possible a place from which it can be obtained – i.e. Amazon, a publisher’s page, or an author’s page.
- Send this information to Sarita Jenamani, the director of Know Her Words: saritajenamani@yahoo.com
These lists will be aggregated and available on the PEN WWC website. Please know, this is just a beginning – there will be an opportunity in the future to add more titles.
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Resources & FAQ
FAQ
Can you nominate dead authors?
Answer: Yes, but remember it is good if works are available for PEN members to read, and also that we are hoping to ask some of the selected writers to do presentations at our future meetings – so better if they are alive for this purpose. But if an author who is dead has written a work your center considers excellent and is a woman, please include it.
Can you nominate authors who are not PEN members?
Answer: Yes! We want the best women writers’ works from around the world.
Can I nominate my own works for inclusion on the Know Her Words List for my PEN Centre?
Answer: No. This project relies on nominations by readers of works, not their authors.
Can we form a special consultative group to select works for inclusion on this list if members of that consultative group are not members of our PEN center?
Answer: Yes, if you trust them to make unbiased selections that represent the best women’s writing from your country/ PEN Centre’s remit, the selections will be attributed to your center.
Can we send longer descriptions of works than just two or three sentences?
Answer: We will not publish them on the official PEN WWC list, but we will have a link back to your centre should you wish to publish longer information on your own centre websites. There is a reality that for people who visit this site looking for works to read many paragraphs per work would make the list unwieldy, and we believe many would not read that length of description. Brevity is golden.
Is this list of ten the end of the list?
Answer: No – we envisage this project building over time and adding more works from different centers that are excellent and have been written by women.
What if members of our PEN Centre don’t agree on the works nominated for the Know Her Words List?
Answer: We will accept the list that is supplied by the PEN Centre’s official representatives – i.e. the Chair of your Centres Women Writers Committee, or if you have no Women Writers Committee, your Centre’s President or the Secretary. In the case of any disagreement, we will seek clarification from these official representatives.
Can I send ideas for how to develop Know Her Words somewhere?
Answer: Please email Sarita with any ideas you have! saritajenamani@yahoo.com
Thank you, Sarita Jenamani and the WWC Board!
