Even in the United States, having the opportunity, the time and the means to be a writer is a privilege.

Still there are places in the world where the act of writing is seen as outlaw behavior. Imagine if, in order to write, you had to get cloaked in a burqa, steal away to a safe location where your family and friends were unaware that you shared poems, wrote essays and created fiction. Such is the life of Afghan women who want to write, and who fight in secret for those rights.

This Sunday, May 15, the Warner Library in Tarrytown will host a Book Group Gathering where journalist, novelist, teacher and humanitarian Masha Hamilton will conduct a lively discussion about these brave Afghan women, and a group discussion about favorite authors and books.

Hamilton is the founder of the two world literacy projects, the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, (her most recent) and the Camel Bookmobile. Both projects, in their own way, push to further and promote literacy in rural communities and in challenging countries where the means to read and write are difficult at best.

“Afghan woman write under frightening conditions,” Hamilton said of the Women’s Writing Project. “They keep private that they write. Their families don’t know. Others get hate letters from the Taliban threatening their lives. While others are fighting off being married to uncles so there are a variety of reasons…I believe [the Afghan project] is the only place where average Afghan women are being encouraged and mentored as they express their stories.”

Once Hamilton realized she needed help to support the increasing number of interested participants in the AWWP, she got busy recruiting other women authors, poets, essayists, and memoirists to give four week writing sessions. Now many more Afghan women have a safe place to share, grow and develop their writing skills via the World Wide Web.

The Camel Bookmobile is library system for remote villages in Kenya near the Somali border. Though this system was operating almost ten years before Hamilton became acquainted with it through her daughter, it was small with few books and heavy fines placed on villages if only one person neglected to return a book.

Hamilton called on her author friends to donate five books each and in return, she’d link to them and their work to a website. The word got out and hundreds of authors donated books. Everyday citizens donated money for camels and supplies.      

Hamilton has written four novels. The most recent, 31 Hours, tells the story of Jonas, a twenty-one year old who in 31 hours may be involved in a violent act involving the New York City train system.

It seems an understatement to say, but Masha Hamilton is a dynamo, with four novels, four children and a husband, two world literacy projects and a bed and breakfast she runs in Brooklyn with her family. 

“Balance is always an issue, of course! When everything does feel perfectly balanced, I know it's not going to last too long," she said. "I imagine all writers, all activists, all parents struggle with this. As writers, we need the in-the-world stuff to feed our work, but we also need to close the door and dive within in order to write it.”

Masha Hamilton lives and works in Brooklyn New York and can be reached via her website at Masha Hamilton.