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hajarpress.bsky.social
Hajar Press
@hajarpress.bsky.social
200 followers 93 following 64 posts
independent political publishing house by and for people of colour
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hajarpress.bsky.social
Lena’s friend Bell doesn’t hold back behind the till at the bookshop 👀🤭

𖦹°⭒˚ೃ࿔

A preview reading by Nida Sajid from 𝘾𝙊𝙊𝙋 at the @lighthousebks.bsky.social Radical Book Fair 💫

𝘾𝙊𝙊𝙋 — a novelette on work and words, and how they distort the world — is out on 18 December! www.hajarpress.com/books/coop
November 21, 2025 at 4:58 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
What could be better on a winter’s day than the cosy warmth of community?? 🫂

Come visit Hajar, @thecommonpress.bsky.social, @peoplesletters.bsky.social + more @ the Tower Hamlets BOOK SALE!

❄️📚🧵💎📓🪡🧶✨
Sat 6 Dec, 10am–2pm

Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives
277 Bancroft Road
London E1 4DQ
November 20, 2025 at 3:33 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
It’s been a beautiful weekend being up in Edinburgh for the Radical Book Fair and a special creative writing workshop around The Hajar Book of Rage 🥰

Love and gratitude to all the amazing people at @lighthousebks.bsky.social, @typewronger.bsky.social and PublishED for all your care and hard work ❤️‍🔥
November 9, 2025 at 6:29 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
Mymona Bibi reads from her poem ‘Application for Social Housing in Tower Hamlets’, published in ‘The Hajar Book of Rage’, at the @lighthousebks.bsky.social Radical Book Fair 2025.

www.hajarpress.com/books/elemen...
November 9, 2025 at 6:19 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
Following two queer Afghans — Delbar and Mansur — whose paths converge in Istanbul, Bobuq Sayed’s piercing debut, NO GOD BUT US, is a story of boundaries crossed, the violence of borders and heteronormativity, and the intricacies of love and power in family, friendship and romance.
November 3, 2025 at 5:08 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
What do we carry from one year to the next?

In her debut collection, OCTOBER, Nur Turkmani meditates on rupture and transformation through cycles of Lebanon’s Octobers, from the euphoria of the 2019 revolution, to its anniversaries marked by crisis, war and the genocide in Gaza.
November 3, 2025 at 4:38 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
🔥 It’s heeeere! The Hajar Book of Rage is out today! Igniting the first spark in the ‘elements’ anthology series, this is a searing tribute to the fires of anger that fuel our resistance 🔥

Get your copy now ☄️☄️☄️

www.hajarpress.com/books/elemen...
October 30, 2025 at 9:35 AM
hajarpress.bsky.social
Autumn is looking eventful! 🍁

Join us for a workshop and a cabaret to launch The Hajar Book of Rage; a conversation about political literature in the @lighthousebks.bsky.social Radical Book Fair; and another celebration of The First Jasmines at @housmansbookshop.bsky.social ❤️‍🔥

hajarpress.com/events
October 29, 2025 at 2:30 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
Saima Begum reading from her debut novel, The First Jasmines. Set in 1971, it tells the stories of the women captured and abused by the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War.

Full video from the book launch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plwz...
October 24, 2025 at 4:46 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
📣 We’re hiring a Community Coordinator!

If you have
⭐️ an understanding of Hajar’s mission
⭐️ experience in community engagement
⭐️ excellent communication & organisational skills
⭐️ the ability to work proactively in a small team

Apply by 7 Nov www.hajarpress.com/jobs
Part-time 10–14 hrs/wk
£17.10/hr
October 15, 2025 at 3:56 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
🎉 Happy publication day to Saima Begum! 👏🏾

THE FIRST JASMINES reveals the lives and experiences of the hundreds of thousands of women captured and abused by the Pakistan Army during the 1971 Bangladeshi Liberation War.

Available now.

www.hajarpress.com/books/the-fi...
July 31, 2025 at 5:00 AM
hajarpress.bsky.social
🎺 We’re now distributed in the US by the fantastic small press distributor @asterismbooks.bsky.social!

Whether you’re a reader or a bookseller, if you’re in North America you can now buy our books through Asterism more quickly and affordably than ever before 🙌🏾

asterismbooks.com/publisher/ha...
July 28, 2025 at 11:16 AM
hajarpress.bsky.social
Subscribers are already reading Saima Begum’s debut novel, The First Jasmines — are you? 👀

Pre-orders will be sent after the official release, but if you can’t wait till the 31st, join the Hajar subscription to get your copy early 🫰🏾

www.hajarpress.com/subscribe
July 17, 2025 at 5:24 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
Saima’s debut novel, The First Jasmines, is out on 31 July. It follows two Bengali sisters captured by the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh Liberation War.

You can preorder it now on our website 🪷

hajarpress.com/books/the-fi...
June 25, 2025 at 4:01 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
British-Bangladeshi author Saima Begum shares family photos and memories, reflecting on how her parents’ inspiration and support has made her writing possible ✍🏾
June 25, 2025 at 4:01 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
One more book for 2025, as a treat!
COOP: A NOVELETTE by Nida Sajid 💫

Between minimum-wage work and strained texts with her parents, Lena’s days are shaped by struggles with food and the hunt for a ‘real job'. As her story unravels, can she find autonomy and escape?
www.hajarpress.com/books/coop
May 15, 2025 at 4:42 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
*NEW BOOK ALERT!*

How good is this cover by Han Gunji Stephens & Samara Jundi for the first book in our new elements series 🧨

Out in October, The Hajar Book of Rage is a searing tribute to the fires of anger that fuel our resistance ❤️‍🔥

Preorder now 😌 www.hajarpress.com/books/elemen...
May 13, 2025 at 4:32 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
These images by Burmese-British photojournalist Chris Steele Perkins show the follow-up antiracist demonstration on 28 April 1979, days after Peach’s death. Thousands of people, many of whom were from the local Punjabi community, came together on the streets to resist fascism.
April 23, 2025 at 12:42 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
Southall had been a site of rising white-supremacist violence for some time. In June 1976, after a local Sikh teenager, Gurdip Singh Chaggar, was fatally stabbed in a racist attack, former National Front chairman John Kingsley Read said in a speech, ‘One down, a million to go.’
April 23, 2025 at 12:42 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
On this day in 1979, schoolteacher and leftist organiser Blair Peach received a killing blow from a police officer at a protest in Southall, west London, against a meeting by the fascist National Front party.
April 23, 2025 at 12:42 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
Leila Khaled was born on this day in 1944. She is a Palestinian insurrectionist who became famous for her involvement in plane hijackings in 1969–70.

On TWA Flight 840 due for Tel Aviv, she demanded the pilot fly over Haifa so she could see her birthplace, which her family fled during the Nakba.
April 9, 2025 at 10:00 PM
hajarpress.bsky.social
‘I don’t believe we can build a different, better world without being heartbroken.’

In ‘We, The Heartbroken’ (2023), Gargi Bhattacharyya plays with the 7 stages of grief to explore heartbreak as class consciousness, asking how being broken by this world could move us to remake it 🌹
March 24, 2025 at 11:44 AM
hajarpress.bsky.social
INTRODUCING: 🔥🌿 elements 🌊🫧 
Our first ever anthology series explores the politically transformative power of Fire, Earth, Water and Air!

Find out more and read our call for submissions here: www.hajarpress.com/books/elemen...
March 7, 2025 at 9:27 AM
hajarpress.bsky.social
CALLING WRITERS OF COLOUR!

We’re looking for new writing for The Hajar Book of Rage 🔥

What do you have to say on revolutionary anger? What do you use rage to fight against and to fight for? How does fury drive you?

Submit to us by 15 April ❤️‍🔥

hajarpress.com/submissions
February 22, 2025 at 9:56 AM
hajarpress.bsky.social
For International #MotherLanguageDay, here’s a sneak peek from Saima Begum’s forthcoming novel, The First Jasmines, on the Bengali Language Movement 🇧🇩

www.hajarpress.com/books/the-fi...
February 21, 2025 at 4:51 PM