Afreen Shanavas – Co-author, Out of My Box

By WriteFluence on July 24, 2021

Afreen Shanavas is the co-author of multiple anthologies including A Mélange of Memories, Thrive, The Unheard Voices and Hope. Her work has also appeared in the Inframe magazine under The Great Indian Art Project.

She was born in India and moved to UAE where she spent most of her childhood reading fiction and watching Hollywood movies. Inspired by the storytelling of phenoms like Steven Spielberg and J.K. Rowling, she was drawn to the art of writing at the age of twelve.

When she isn’t reading or writing, you can find her cycling, playing badminton or scrolling through Instagram. Afreen now makes her home in God’s own country with her family.

I am incredibly honored and pleased to work with Write Fluence and its brilliant team who worked relentlessly to ensure the success of this project. Keep up the good work!
Afreen Shanavas on her experience writing for FemmeFluenza

Here’s an excerpt out of her winning story The Woman President that’s now published in ‘Out of My Box’

I always dreamed big. Big enough to be the scapegoat of wet blankets from society, relatives, friends, and pessimists. For long, I remained oblivious of the reason. Later on, I got to know. It was only obvious. My dream was considered paradoxical to my standards. For a woman, it was only a double disincentive. A
woman being a leader would be the queerest thing you would hear. That’s how it was in my village.

I had always wanted to be a leader. Always. From marshaling the girls in my village to school to escorting the neighbor’s sheep, I always had the urge to rule. The only bound my joy knew the day I was selected as the class leader was the fact that this would last only for twenty-nine days. A new student would take
the throne next month. Leaders change. Quite difficult to accept for a bubbling enthusiastic girl of ten, who wanted to boss people around.