"Good writing never ever feels preachy"

For each episode of the Don’t Pretend We’re Dead podcast, I’ll be talking with women doing interesting work right now in the fields of advocacy, arts and culture, food, science and technology. Ladies who give me a shred of hope in these dark times—and who doesn’t need more of that? Subscribe for free to learn about new episodes.

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Mentioned in this episode with Ruth Mukwana:

Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Stories and Humanitarian Action (SAHA) podcast—check out this episode I really liked: Championing Women and Girls: A Conversation with UN Gender Advisor April Pham

Ruth Mukwana is the former Chief of Section, Asia & Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in New York. She has held several positions with OCHA including as Chief of Duty of Care, Wellbeing and Capacity Development in the Executive Office and Deputy Head of Office for Sudan. Her experience includes training, protection, internal displacement, voluntary repatriation, advocacy, access and refugee status determination. Currently she is the Helen Hamlyn Senior Fellow at the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, where she teaches humanitarian advocacy. Ruth is also a fiction writer and was the 2020 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil NYC Emerging Fellow. Her work has appeared in several magazines including Bomb, Solstice, Consequence and Black Warrior Review, and she has just completed a novel. She is also the creator and host of the podcast Stories and Humanitarian Action (SAHA), which explored how fiction can be used to raise awareness on humanitarian crises and drive action with a particular focus on war. Set in her home country of Uganda against the backdrop of conflict, poverty, and totalitarian regime, Ruth’s short stories explore what happens when women rise up and dismantle the status quo and become heroes of their own stories.

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