OUTSIDE WOMEN | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation

Would you risk your own life to pursue justice for a stranger? Two migrant women—separated by geographies and generations—face this same devastating choice.

Lured away from her home in 1890s India, Sita is brought to South Africa as an indentured servant—one among millions funneled by the British to replace the recently abolished slave trade. One hundred years later, Hajra, a Pakistani scholar, is forced to flee to New York City from her home in Peshawar after witnessing a violent act meant to target her. She loses herself in academic research until she comes face-to-face with a photo of a laughing, defiant young woman brandishing a banner in protest. Inexorably drawn to this woman, Hajra travels to South Africa to learn more and unknowingly traces Sita's path.

With raw imagery and rich sensory detail, Roohi Choudhry's incandescent debut novel Outside Women intertwines the narratives of two women painfully yet valiantly carving their existences outside of patriarchal and colonial spaces as they search for kinship and strength in solidarity.

Roohi Choudhry is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside author Karen Outen to dive deeper into the themes of her captivating, debut novel. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Choudhry will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of OUTSIDE WOMEN will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed. 

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Roohi Choudhry is a writer, teaching artist, and researcher who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Pakistan and raised in southern Africa, she holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship and residencies at Hedgebrook and Djerassi. She worked as a researcher in criminal justice reform and public health, wrote for the United Nations, and facilitates creative writing workshops for interfaith groups, schools, libraries, and community organizations. Her stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Callaloo, Longreads, and the Kenyon Review.  Her debut novel, Outside Women (University Press of Kentucky, March 2025), was named one of the "most anticipated feminist books of 2025" by Ms. Magazine and described as “riveting… an incisive story of how change happens” by Publishers’ Weekly. Find out more at roohichoudhry.com.

Karen Outen’s fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The North American Review, Essence, and elsewhere. She is a 2018 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award and has been a fellow at both the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan and the Pew Fellowships in the Arts. She received an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Bowie, Maryland. Dixon, Descending (Dutton, 2024) is her first novel.

Host or Publisher Busboys and Poets