Join us for Hajar Reads: Food. In this special edition of Hajar Reads we’re partnering with misery to bring you a relaxed session of readings, snacks, and more informal discussions.

We’ll use short extracts from selected Hajar Press titles—including October (Nur Turkmani), COOP: A Novelette (Nida Sajid) and Pearls from Their Mouth (Pear Nuallak)—to prompt discussions and reflective moments. We’ll also look at extracts from misery meals, ‘a choose-your-own-adventure collection of recipes, art and resources by mad and disabled, queer and trans, global majority people’, edited by Aisha Mirza and published by misery.

There’s no preparation needed for this session; just come along ready to listen, snack and share!

‘There is nothing like Mama’s baking. People always say that her sweet breath permeates her food—a compliment only really good cooks get. It means that her intuition makes her food taste distinctively like hers—her breath can only be her breath. I’d like to think she passed it on to me.’

— Heba Hayek, Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies

This session is co-hosted by Hajar Press and misery and will be facilitated by Amber Obasi and Aisha Mirza.

misery (est. 2019) is a radical mental health arts hub, sober party, grief holding and healing justice space, decolonial outdoor education programme and publisher, based in London, UK. misery is led by and for queer, trans and intersex people of the global majority with lived experience of madness, mental health challenges, time in hospital, addiction, public service use, disability, medical and institutional trauma, medication and neurodivergence. misery is a reminder that you’re not crazy, it’s mad out here.

Visit Eventbrite for tickets.

In keeping with misery’s ethos, this month’s reading group will be a closed session for queer, trans and intersex people of colour.

For early access to spaces at Hajar Reads, consider joining our subscription; we release a limited number of early free spots to our subscribers every month.