In a bid to better understand the challenges faced by female entrepreneurs managing multiple roles on a daily basis, The News on Sunday spoke with Safinah Danish Elahi, a poet, novelist, lawyer and the founder of an award-winning independent press, Reverie Publishers. Excerpts follow:

The News on Sunday: Please share some of your insights as a woman in the publishing industry and the challenges you’ve overcome as a young entrepreneur.

Safinah Danish Elahi: I do have a bit of a business background as well as a legal one. This helped me navigate intellectual rights, basic knowledge of pricing, profit and loss etc. Publishing, I had not known much about, apart from the fact that my own novel had been recently published in Pakistan. I felt that there should be more support for the authors and that overall work practices could be improved. That was why I set up shop. I think some of the challenges I faced could be accounted to me being young and a female. I had to follow through with what I was promising the literary landscape.

TNS: Have you witnessed any changes in the industry since the first time you decided to delve into publishing? Was it difficult to march into a job so different from a law practice?

SDE: Yes, at the time I established Reverie, I was writing but knew little about publishing. So rather than going for an LLM, which is a master’s in law, I decided to do an MFA in publishing and contemporary fiction. I graduated a few months ago. This gave me a proper perspective on global publishing. I also met industry experts, learnt to market books etc.

TNS: The presentation and perception of women has altered the way women address literature. In your experience, how has the literary landscape evolved in addressing women’s issues? Do you see Reverie having a role in this evolution?

SDE: I think women have been writing for quite some time but some of it has often been shelved as women’s fiction or chick lit. Some women in the past have taken an alias so their work is taken seriously. But that is a part of a larger debate – whether men should write female voices and vice versa. Reverie has picked up stories that I thought no one was addressing. Literature is meant to have a dialogue with uncomfortable truths; if not for stories, how do we relate to the world? We’ve recently done an anthology with female writers called Mightier. I would urge anyone reading this to pick up a copy and know how reading these stories makes you feel.

TNS: Are there any upcoming predictable shifts in global trends and local changes in the industry that you believe will particularly impact women’s narratives and representation?

SDE: I think women are more open to sharing their experiences in this decade than they were in the last. There is less censorship of thought. Male writers never had to do that and women are now able to navigate writing about their experiences. I do feel a revival in reading culture globally with popular content creators and celebrities endorsing books and memoirs, whether it’s the traditional paperback, ebook format or audio. Although I’m yet to see an increase in readership in Pakistan.

TNS: What initiatives or themes do you believe resonate most with your readership?

SDE: I don’t think there is a specific theme, but I do believe a good story is a good story. That however, will not sell a good book. There are lots of factors at play, how long the author has been writing for, if she already has an audience etc. In terms of themes, from law to satire, to politics, a lot of themes we’ve published have been received really well.

TNS: Is there a specific story that personally resonated with you?

SDE: All books that Reverie has published have been hand picked by me, so I’d say all of them have resonated with me. But some in particular, Moni Mohsin’s Impeccable Integrity of Ruby R, and Mightier – a selection of writings from the ZHR writing prize for women, have been especially empowering.

TNS: What policies could benefit the publishing industry in Pakistan, especially initiatives that promote women writers, publishers and entrepreneurs?

SDE: I think at the end of the day every business needs support to sustain. We could do with sponsored books that serve a specific women related theme so we don’t have to carry the financial burden of producing a book. At the same time, popular publications could carry interviews and reviews of our books, so books and authors also receive some kind of recognition if not as much as actors and singers. Some kind of support on a government level by subsidising some of the cost of publishing so that we can reach more readers, can also help.

The interviewer is an undergraduate student of psychology at FC College, Lahore