Veils, Halos & Shackles

All over the world, girls and women are victims of violence, oppression, and discrimination. No country, no community, no religious or ethnic group is immune. Too often, women's voices are stifled, ignored, or trivialized--and as a result, other victims feel alone and unsupported.

Veils, Halos & Shackles, the first-ever anthology of international poetry specifically addressing the oppression and empowerment of women, includes more than 250 extraordinary poems from every continent, contributed by some of the world's most accomplished living poets. Many are themselves survivors of rape and other gender-based crimes; others are grandmothers, mothers, daughters, friends, and teachers of victims and survivors. Still others write out of empathy and concern, having been moved deeply by the fate of those who suffer and die just because they are female. They offer heartfelt testimony of what they have experienced and witnessed.

Veils, Halos & Shackles is an important and timely contribution to the cause of women's empowerment and freedom; it speaks to a global audience and gives a voice to the millions whose outcries have been silenced.

Charles Fishman's books include The Death Mazurka, which was nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and In the Language of Women (2011), recipient of the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. The revised, second edition of his anthology, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, was published in 2007 by Time Being Books, which released his Selected Poems, In the Path of Lightning, in 2012. Fishman is poetry editor of Prism: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators and, with Smita Sahay of Mumbai, India, has co-edited VEILS, HALOS AND SHACKLES: INTERNATIONAL POETRY ON THE OPPRESSION AND EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN.

Smita Sahay is an Indian English-language writer. She has read her poetry at 100 Thousand Poets for Change in Pune and Mumbai, the Prakriti Poetry Festival in Chennai, and Pen at Prithvi in Mumbai. She co-conceptualized and served as Associate Editor of VEILS, HALOS & SHACKLES: INTERNATIONAL POETRY ON THE OPPRESSION AND EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN. Sahay grew up in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand in India, and customs, traditions and culture from her childhood are recurring themes in her work, as are social prejudices and injustices. Her parents, with two daughters, were often questioned by pitying friends, relatives and neighbors about not having a third child and not "trying for" a son. Those early experiences made clear to her how necessary it is to stand up to gender inequality, and that principle remains an integral part of her consciousness. Sahay received her MBA from the Indian School of Business in 2015 and is currently setting up an entrepreneurial venture to improve mental-healthcare delivery through the use of technology. She lives, writes, and works in Mumbai, India.