A new writers’ collective based in Pakistan, Zabaan has the goal of ‘promoting writers across South Asia, and globally’. As well as running courses, workshops, and interactive learning programs, the group will publish an online journal of fiction, poetry, translations, and critical essays ‘by new and established writers’.
This collective is stroppy: ‘We believe in tongue-lashing. We believe in catharsis through writing.’ Zabaan needs bold writing, ‘that challenges our notions of form, tradition, and convention, but also, of race, class, gender, sexuality, identity, psychology, philosophy and the art of writing itself’.