iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

The Feministani feministani.substack.com?r=521dpr&utm... My new venture, a Substack, to take up where my blog left off. Subscribe, share, show your support! Everything is free... for now.

feministani.substack.com

The Feministani | Substack

Writer. Click to read The Feministani, a Substack publication. Launched 2 days ago.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

I finished Howard Jacobson's What Will Survive of Us and I cannot believe that he made Lily stop having sex with Sam because of VAGINAL ATROPHY. Dude, estrogen cream, laser therapy, and FREQUENT SEX helps the condition. Did you even consult a gynecologist when you wrote that?!?!?!

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

I'm reading What Will Survive of Us by Howard Jacobson. What an odd novel. Yet it's made me laugh out loud in places. #HowardJacobson #WhatWillSurviveOfUs #reading #contemporarylit #novel

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

Why is it that the only way to show someone how cool you are is by ignoring them?

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

I still don't know how to use this site. But Twitter has become a cesspool of racism, misogyny, and overall stupidity. I'm not sure how to access the zeitgeisty convos here though.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

But cancellation can feel like an execution. It should be saved for the worst offenders, those who wilfully and knowingly seek to cause harm. Not everyone deserves the death penalty on the Internet.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

We all have our blind spots and biases. We tire of explaining them, of the responsibility of educating other people how to think of and speak about us. Discrimination can feel like a whip on an already scarred back.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Racist terminology has become a kind of shorthand so that people don't have to explain what they mean when they notice someone's other-ness. It takes a while to become aware of this, even when you are not white. When you see it, you can't unsee it.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Did the publishers of Some Kids have anyone non-white even read the book so they could pick up on things that would not occur to Kate as offensive? I read how the editors/PR folks she met with hadn't even read her book.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Perhaps the writers that called her out for her cluelessness assigned a malice to her that was born out of their own anger at being discriminated against, in culture and in society. Twitter in those days gave power to people who couldn't raise their voices against a powerful industry.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

I'm three episodes in to Anatomy of a Cancellation. Kate Clanchy's intentions are so good but she does come across as unaware of how her words might affect non-white people, immigrants, etc. She did not deserve to be bullied for that, just educated. #anatomyofacancellation #podcast #kateclanchy

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Beautiful Kaak Asawer (Palestinian date ring cookies)

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

I think I better start getting active here again. Anyone been listening to Anatomy of a Cancellation?

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Meta stole my novel to train its AI.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

@johncusack.bsky.social do you still have hope? Asking for a friend...

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Unpopular opinion: no, I don't think your writing is any good.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

I want to open a coffee shop for older women called "It's Not Too Latte"

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

There's a piece of AI "creative" metafiction floating around on social media. Let me tell you that piece of writing is not good writing. There is not one ounce of human emotion in it -- it's like writing behind a glass wall, in a museum of the future, where aliens are laughing at us.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Happy to tell you that The Monsoon War, my novel about militant feminist resistance and sequel to Before She Sleeps, won the Getz Pharma English Fiction prize at the Karachi Literature Festival this past weekend. Looking forward to hearing what you think of it!

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

I bragged about not being married in the national newspaper. I really hope my mom doesn't read my essay.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

My Diane Keaton era is starting in 2025, I feel.

A picture of the author Bina Shah wearing a red shawl from Pakistan and red sunglasses. She's standing on the balcony of her Karachi home with neem trees and blue skies in the background.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

At the bookstore. Sales person sees me come in, hastily brings a few of my books down from a dusty top shelf and puts one half-heartedly on a display. The glamor of being a successful novelist.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

I'm glad to meet you. Somehow doctors and medicine keep showing up in my work. I'm interested in the field of narrative medicine as well, and in how doctors and medical professionals are portrayed in fiction.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Need to get this guy a license plate that says A55H0L3

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Wrote what I think is the first page of a new novel on Sunday. I'm too scared to look at it now, it's the point of no return. Anyone else know how that feels? #writing #novel #firstpage

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

I still have that dimple! And the scarf.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Almost 21. Taken at Wellesley College for my senior class photo, 1993.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

You're taking me here in February

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

"But who was really eating it up there?" I asked. "Baby Grok!" he said, as the girls hid their faces muttering "Oh my GOD". "No cap?" I said. "Baby Grok had the most rizz, huh?" #GenZ #Teaching #GenX #translation #communication

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Showed my students a music video and asked them to explain the story to me (we are studying narrative writing). "Can I do it in Gen Z?" asks one of my students, then proceeds to talk about Twitch Streamers, Baby Grok, and god knows what else.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Papa, if only you knew that teaching one of your stories to a bunch of 10th graders at 8 am is as hard if not harder than reeling in a 400 pound marlin, driving an ambulance in a battlefield, and running with the bulls all at the same time... #hemingway #teaching #English #highschool

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

The hardest part about teaching English at my old school is the three flights of stairs I have to climb to reach my classroom #yesimold

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Teaching Hemingway to a class of 10th grade boys who think only Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson know how to be a man. And yet they spoke of admiration for their fathers and an absolute ignorance of how to go from being boys to men like their dads, who they respect and love.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

A book that influenced me greatly in my teens was Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. I'd like to re-read it to see, thirty years later, whether it moves me the same way. #writing #novels #comingofage #somersetmaugham

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Museum of the Future, Dubai. This city was the inspiration for Green City in my novel Before She Sleeps. It looks like 2070 here.

A photo of the Museum of the Future at night, with the Emirates Towers behind, in Dubai, UAE.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

My review of Gladiator 2: good entertainment, excellent fight scenes. Paul Mescal convincing as sensitively raging hunk with sad eyes and bulging thighs. Denzel Washington supremely crafty, twin Roman emperors both looked like Ed Sheeran. Not a perfect movie, not a waste of time either. 7 out of 10.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

So according to the Internet (and ChatGPT) here are some books I have supposedly written, including one which has won me the International Booker Prize. No points for guessing where you go if you click on the links. #chatGPTsucks #AIsucks #craftsmannotartist

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

I have caught a cold. I am going to die so there will be no writing advice for the next three months #writers #creativelicense #melodramatic

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Reposted by Bina Shah

Melissa Florer-Bixler @melissaf-b.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

A poem for my last day working at the writing center for the semester (by Joseph Fasano)

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

My niece Pireh is a singer-songwriter in Karachi, Pakistan, and this is her latest single. Give it a listen and give her some love! open.spotify.com/track/6ypz9l...

open.spotify.com

Ode to a Girl I Don't Know

Pireh · Ode to a Girl I Don't Know · Song · 2024

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Yesterday someone asked my advice about their novel, written from a woman's POV. "How do you know you've been able to do it well?" I asked him. "My female students read it and said it was good," he replied. Being a writer requires a certain amount of arrogance, but this ain't it. #writing

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

A poem I like, and this isn't sarcasm. "On Living" by Nazim Hikmet #poetry #poets #NazimHikmet #OnLiving poets.org/poem/living

poets.org

On Living

Living is no laughing matter:

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Being a writer is one of the few jobs where you get paid to feel emotions. Perhaps the other one is psychic or tarot card reader.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Thank you, I really enjoyed that! And I now know that Teddy Thompson is their son. Cheers.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Last night I attended a piano concert given by a famous French pianist and afterwards a dinner hosted by the French consul general. The charming pianist was on my right and the hot French head of security on my left. My life is mostly a Mr. Bean movie, but sometimes it turns into Casablanca.

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Bina Shah @binashah.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

I've missed your art posts!

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