Sohaila Abdulali did not want to write a book about her experience of being raped. It was a long time ago and she’d very much moved on with her life. But, after some articles she’d written about it went viral, she did write a book. 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape' is an incredible, genre-defying discussion of the troubling ways that rape and sexual violence are experienced and discussed. With no self-pity but much insight and a joyous character, she brings sensible, open thinking to an entirely taboo topic.

Content Warning: this episode of It's A Long Story contains discussion of sexual violence.

Support can be found at Lifeline: 13 11 14 and lifeline.org.au

This episode is part of a six-part ‘It’s A Long Story’ series featuring alumni from our All About Women festival. All About Women returns to Sydney Opera House on 8 March 2020.

How we define ourselves comes from a place of difference. At least that's what Carolin Emcke writes about in her book, How We Desire, which investigates gender and identity. But her own identity? Now that’s more complicated. Emcke has been reporting from war zones since the early 2000s, where she's witnessed and written about some of the most horrific acts humans are capable of. She is a fearless and completely original thinker on all things from the effect that atrocity has on those who are compelled to report upon it, to the ethics of journalism, to what it means to be queer today.

This episode is part of a six-part ‘It’s A Long Story’ series featuring alumni from our All About Women festival. All About Women returns to Sydney Opera House on 8 March 2020.

Sarah Smarsh is the daughter of a teenaged mother, who was the daughter of a teenaged mother, who was the daughter of a teenaged mother. Born into a dirt-poor family in rural Kansas, Smarsh realised young that if she could get educated and not pregnant, she would be able to break the pattern of the women in her family. Her memoir, Heartland, is a wonderful tribute to those women, as well as a proud  insider’s look into a culture that is often mocked, reviled and misunderstood, and a searing critique of a political and economic system that entrenches inequality in America. 

This episode is part of a six-part ‘It’s A Long Story’ series featuring alumni from our All About Women festival. All About Women returns to Sydney Opera House on 8 March 2020.

Joan Morgan grew up in the Bronx alongside a growing hip hop movement in the 1980s. Coming of age in the 90s, as hip hop became an international cultural phenomenon, Joan Morgan became one of the first women to write about hip hop for magazines. In 1999, Morgan coined the term “hip-hop feminism” in her groundbreaking book When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost which applied a feminist lens to a nortoriously sexist genre. More recently, she penned a definitive analysis of The Miseducation of Lauren Hill, to mark the 20th anniversary of that classic, seminal album.