Zahra Joya with Katy Grant: The Vanishing Girl of Kabul

Zahra Joya is an Afghan journalist now living in exile in London and the founder of Rukhshana Media, one of Afghanistan’s first news agencies dedicated to women’s stories. Her courageous journalism has earned international recognition, including the Marie Colvin Award, the Louis M. Lyons Award and the Foreign Press Award. She was named a TIME Woman of the Year in 2022 and included in the BBC’s 100 Women. She is now a Fellow at Hughes Hall, Cambridge.

In The Vanishing Girl of Kabul, Zahra tells the extraordinary story of growing up female in Afghanistan, from disguising herself as a boy to attend school under the first Taliban regime, to becoming a journalist and establishing her own media company. In August 2021, as the Taliban closed in on Kabul, she was forced to flee in the chaotic mass exodus from Afghanistan, leaving behind the life she had built.

Co-written with award-winning journalist Amie Ferris-Rotman, the book is an intimate memoir of courage, survival and resistance, and a powerful warning about the fragility of women’s rights.