About Us

Honna Publishing House — we are more than a publishing house. We are a feminist platform and learning space dedicated to spreading feminist education and fostering a culture grounded in gender justice—a culture that challenges all structural forms of discrimination based on religion, gender, race, or sexual and gender identity.
We stand against the unequal distribution of power, resources, and opportunities that keeps women and marginalized groups in vulnerable positions within social structures.

Founded in August 2017, Honna is the first feminist publishing house in the Arabic-speaking regions of Africa and the Middle East.

  • 6
  • 7
  • 3
  • 1
  • 10
  • 2
  • 9
  • 10
  • 4
  • 299513366_1106299179989502_8347776518816504824_n
  • 299766161_1106299289989491_31864902094647371_n

We adopt a transformative and intersectional feminist approach, placing survivors at the heart of our work.
We prioritize their voices and support the development of their critical consciousness.
Working side by side with survivors of structural and gender-based violence, we strive to create spaces for collective reflection, learning, healing, and solidarity.

Through our work, we produce and circulate feminist knowledge and narratives. Our activities include:

Publishing feminist books and translations.

Hosting workshops and events such as:
– The Honna Book Club for feminist readings,
– The Cinema Club for film discussions,
– The Feminist Reading Circle (a quarterly theme-based group),
– Feminist Translation Labs,
– Creative Writing and Short Story Workshops,
– The Honna Literary Residency in St. Catherine,
– Feminist Comics Labs,
– Podcast Production Workshops,
– and training in literary editing and screenwriting.

You can explore all our programs and past events in the Activities section.

We also host a feminist library, featuring a carefully curated collection of books and resources.
We warmly invite you to visit us — browse, read, and discover titles that speak to your interests.
Our space is cozy, safe, and welcoming — a place for women to meet, read, discuss, dance, cry, heal, and laugh together.

We would love for you to get to know us better.
Come visit Honna — you are always welcome.

Our Objectives

  1. We aim to build a model of feminist publishing that actively participates in cultural movements capable of creating real and transformative change.

  2. We are committed to publishing feminist writings—creative and theoretical, in Arabic and in translation, and also feminist works for children.

  3. We seek to decolonize feminist knowledge by producing and translating work in Arabic that reflects the lived experiences and realities of women and marginalized genders in the region.

  4. We work to develop a localized feminist pedagogy that bridges theory and practice, creating spaces for collective learning and reflection.

  5. We focus on strengthening women’s skills and capacities to enable them to produce feminist knowledge and to forge new intellectual, creative, and transformative pathways.

Strategic directions

“Elles” is a unique feminist space located in the heart of Cairo, Egypt. It is one of the few spaces in the MENA region and within the Arabic-speaking belt that has dared to take on the responsibility of addressing the scarcity of feminist literature and resources in Arabic. This need to became especially and urgently in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and at the end of the first decade of the millennium, when the rise of feminism could no longer be ignored or marginalized.

“Elles” made a conscious decision to translate important feminist writings in order to bridge the gap between theory and practice, to connect feminist knowledge between the Global North and South, and ultimately to produce local, authentic knowledge rooted in the region.

At the heart of this vision lies the resilience and resistance of women—expressed through creative writing, storytelling, and the sharing of personal narratives.

“Elles” also aspires to be a safe, free, and feminist space in downtown Cairo—a city marked by widespread violence, harassment, and shrinking civic spaces, particularly for women.

What follows are the strategic directions for the period 2025–2028, through which we seek to realize the mission of “Elles” as a laboratory of feminist thought: developing new feminist concepts and pathways, identifying tactics to transform these concepts into feminist practices, testing and renewing them in everyday life, and exposing violence against women through an artistic, cultural, and feminist lens. The goal is to equip survivors with the awareness and capacity to identify visible and invisible forms of violence, understand its structural causes, and cultivate diverse forms of resistance—transforming these into collective, visible, and tangible practices.

But before outlining the strategic directions, we share our feminist self-conception:

“And where the voices of women are struggling to be heard, each of us must recognize her responsibility to seek out those voices, to read them, to share them, and to examine their relevance to our lives.”-Audre Lorde

Our starting point is rooted in the belief that the work begins with finding women’s voices, removing the barriers that silenced them, amplifying and sharing those voices, and learning from them.

Elles is committed to uncovering hidden forms of violence experienced by women—whether in the workplace, on the streets, or in bedrooms. This unveiling is made possible through the diverse and multifaceted voices of women that reflect their lived realities, needs, and struggles.

Elles sees itself as a feminist publishing house that is deeply connected to both the Egyptian and regional feminist movements—movements that resist all forms of domination and colonialism. It is dedicated to producing feminist knowledge and practice grounded in a critical understanding of a world that systematically marginalizes the voices of women from the Global South, while powerful actors continue to claim to represent women through a singular voice that presumes authority and knowledge.

  1. Strategic Direction One: Feminist Pedagogy – Feminist Education

  2. Strategic Direction Two: Kitchen Storytelling

  3. Strategic Direction Three: Producing Feminist Knowledge in Arabic — “From Individual Voice to Collective Archive”

  4. Strategic Direction Four: Building Bridges and Partnerships

Our Activities

We create and curate a wide spectrum of feminist and cultural activities that unfold across five main areas:

1. Publishing House
We publish feminist books written by both women and men—works that challenge patriarchy, question dominant narratives, and open new spaces for feminist imagination and dialogue.

2. Library
Our library showcases not only our own publications but also books from other feminist and independent publishers. The collection includes feminist theory, novels, poetry, and interdisciplinary works—all offered at accessible prices. Come visit us and explore a space where feminist ideas and stories live side by side.

3. Workshops
We organize a variety of workshops designed to strengthen skills and creativity in feminist writing, podcast production, feminist translation, screenwriting, and feminist ethnography, among others. Each workshop is a collective learning space that connects theory with lived experience.

4. Events
We host regular events that bring feminist thought and community to life. Every last Saturday of the month, we hold the Honna Writing Marathon. Our Honna Book Club meets monthly to discuss a selected book from a feminist perspective. The Feminist Cinema Program screens one film each month, followed by discussions. We also organize annual activities during the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, on March 8 (International Women’s Day), and March 16 (Egyptian Women’s Day).

5. Projects
We design feminist projects that explore women’s experiences and social realities through creative, reflective, and healing processes. Examples include #Abuse, which focused on emotional abuse faced by women; #Motherhood, which reimagined motherhood as a joyful and liberating experience free from guilt or burden; and Writing, Dancing, Healing, a project that centered on trauma—its roots, its expressions, and the ways women can heal through reading, writing, and movement.

We announce all our workshops and events well in advance. If you’d like to stay connected and join our upcoming activities, reach out to us—we’d love to hear from you.