The Challenge of Change: Women's lives in the Middle East

Jokha Alharthi is the author of two previous collections of short fiction, a children's book, and three novels, and teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat. She is the only Arabic author to win the International Booker Prize, awarded to her novel Celestial Bodies in 2019.

Zahra Hankir is a Lebanese-British journalist who writes about the intersection of politics, culture and society in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in Vice, BBC News, Al Jazeera English, Bloomberg Businessweek, Roads & Kingdoms, and Literary Hub, among others. She is the editor of Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women reporting on the Arab World.

Azadeh Moaveni is the author of Lipstick Jihad, the co-author, with Nobel Peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening and, most recently, Guest House for Young Widows: Women and ISIS. Since 1999, she has reported widely from Iran on youth culture, women’s rights, and Islamic reform for Time, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, and The Los Angeles Times. She is currently a senior gender analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Shakira Hussein is the author of From Victims to Suspects: Muslim Women Since 9/11 and a contributor to the anthology #MeToo: Stories from the Australian Movement. She is a research fellow at the University of Melbourne, and has published on topics including racism, gender violence and disability.