Amani Saeed is an international writer whose work brings the big issues to your kitchen table. She writes poetry, films, articles, bad date reviews, and whatever else is needed to get the point across. Their writing explores the crisis cultivated by living between sometimes (but not always) contradictory cultures, treading the line between roots and routes.
Amani is the founder of the interdisciplinary sell-out night the hen-nah party, designed by and for queer South Asians. She’s performed and produced for community venues that hold her heart, such as Richmix and The Common Press, and also at fancy venues, including Royal Albert Hall, the UN, Soho Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre and The Globe.
She is also a workshop facilitator with extensive experience in working with young people, and takes an equitable approach to working with marginalised writers. Their poetry collection, Split, was published with Burning Eye Books. Amani is the co-writer for Queer Parivaar, which premiered at the BFI Flare 2022 and won Best in British at the Iris Prize 2022. She writes a biweekly Substack series called in good faith, which publishes every Tuesday. We spoke to her after her time at FLEM Festival's literary residence in Magaluf.
For anyone who is just getting to know your work, could you please introduce yourself and describe what you do?
Hello! I’m Amani, a writer and spoken word artist. My work circles queerness, faith and identity. Raised in the intersection (read: crossfire) of being a multiracial, multinational, queer, Muslim woman, I’m interested in the tensions of the in-between. I’m tired of trying to simplify what is complex, so now I write to make pleasurable the contradictions the world keeps trying to straighten out — lately, the place where queerness and Islam meet.
I’m the founder of the hen-nah party, a sell-out interdisciplinary night by and for queer South Asians that offers all the joy of a traditional henna night, minus the gender stereotypes. I have performed at the Royal Albert Hall, the Globe, and for the UN, among others. My poetry collection, Split, was published with Burning Eye Books, and the short film I co-wrote, Queer Parivaar, won Best in British at the Iris Prize 2022.
I write poetry, essays, film and the occasional bad date review—whatever gets the point across. I’ve just started a Substack series called Diasphoria that names the dead ends the South Asian diaspora gets stuck in when it comes to creativity, and offers paths forward. Because there are only so many times we can reference disappointing the aunties, coconuts, and cut fruit.
How did the places you grew up in and the cultures that you were exposed to impact your decision of becoming a writer?
I was born in London but raised in Princeton, New Jersey. I come from a predominantly Indian background and grew up in a mainly Asian community that was profiled in the New York Times for being ruthless when it came to academics. Whatever I did, the culture around me expected me to be excellent at it.
At the same time, it was this same district that offered a lunchtime writer’s club for students, which is where I first started writing poetry. And I’ve been keeping journals since I was a child. However, writing wasn’t necessarily treated as a career path. As such, I’ve always thought of being a writer as something you were rather than a career choice. So I never decided to become a writer—I’ve just been one.
Of course, writers evolve, and I’m currently thinking about what kind of writer I want to become. Growing up, I saw the role of the artist more broadly as ‘people who tell the truth.' The kind of folks who would point out the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes.
I want to realign with that. While I’ve curated events that had that ethos at the core, I used to think I wrote first and foremost for myself, and if anyone connected with it, that was a bonus. This year, I’m moving away from inward-facing work and thinking about how to use my pen to be useful. For me, that means being relentlessly honest, even if that means being subversive, and finding a way to express the things I’m noticing in a way that arouses curiosity and empathy rather than defensiveness. Hence the Diasphoria series.
Your work often explores what it means to live between cultures, communities and identities. How has the concept of identity evolved for you over time and has it shifted the type of work you choose or agree to create?
When I was a teenager, my understanding of identity came purely from an intrinsic place. It was something that I felt I could choose myself, whether that was through the clothes I wore, the way I spoke, or even my handwriting, which I wanted to feel distinctive and uniquely mine (classic teenage behaviour).
Going to the University of Exeter was a real culture shock because I realised the full extent of how being racialised and marginalised shaped perceptions of my identity in a way I had no control over. For a while, I internalised those perceptions. I felt I had to learn about “my identity” and “my faith” as tangible concepts in order to explain and defend them in seminars where I could expect to hear racist and Islamophobic points of view being put forward. This also really affected my writing practice. So much of my early work, particularly the spoken word, was about defending Muslim women. Trying to show what it was like to be me, to be like us. Trying to get people to empathise and understand.
I’m now in a place where I want to return to the idea that while of course identity is something that is formed both internally and responsively, it doesn’t have to be formed reactively. We can’t deny our environments and the societies we live in, but we can choose to shape ourselves deliberately and in relationship with others. I can’t choose not to live in a world that reacts to me with surprise and disbelief, but I can choose not to be defensive or over-explanatory.
I can choose to write about topics I am actively interested in and that I am pulled toward, and in ways that are true to me, rather than the kind of clickbait stuff people might want or expect to see. You want me to tell you my family had a hard time with me being queer? That my identity was shaped by suffering? Want me to talk about how I’ve struggled to reconcile Islam and my queerness? No. It’s not true. I’m gonna write about joy, thank you very much, because that’s how I experience that crossover!
You founded the Hen-nah Party, a queer alternative to traditional henna nights where participants indulge in live performances, music, dance, poetry, conversation food and henna. What inspired you to create such a space and what has this experience taught you about bringing people together in a communal space?
I used to run a night called Golden Tongue on behalf of The Yoniverse, a collective of South Asian women. At the time, there weren’t very many South Asian-centred spaces in London, and we always sold out. When the collective disbanded, I felt a responsibility toward the audience that we had been serving and wanted to keep the momentum going. I was coming into my queerness and wanted to be part of a community but didn’t quite know how to go about finding it. So I thought, why not bring the community to me?
Running the hen-nah party has taught me so much about bringing people together - namely, that it’s not easy and you can’t take one bit of it for granted. Queer South Asian audiences have complex needs. We’re talking about a community that’s been affected by the historical legacies of partition, imperialism, sectarianism, generational trauma, internalised racism and homophobia-- and on top of that, we all seem to be dating/have dated each other!!
There used to be a lot of talk about ‘safe spaces,’ which was becoming a euphemism for spaces where people aren’t exposed to triggers. This wasn’t what I wanted to make. I wanted to create a space where people could talk about all the triggering stuff, and also innovate. So much of mainstream culture stems from what is created in queer Black and Brown spaces. I wanted to curate the kind of brave space where we could experiment, fail, and shine all at the same time.
Building a space that can hold all of us is a tall order, especially because people have different expectations and baselines for what they want from the night. You will always disappoint someone. At the same time, you will also show someone else that a whole new world is possible.
During your time at FLEM 2026 literary residency, you were focusing on a series of essays that you have been writing for some time. Looking back, how did the time, space and conversations generated during the residency influence the direction of this body of work and, in your experience, why do you feel it is important to revisit work in a different setting?
During the residency, I spent a lot of time with Mar, the Catalan winner of the FLEM residency. We spoke at length about our relationships with our practices. I have a slightly codependent relationship with my writing, i.e. if I’m not writing consistently or at length, I feel like a failure as a person. To me, writing is a lifestyle. Mar treats writing like a job. She can enter it, step away from it, and enjoy it as a profession, which was a bit of a revelation. It might sound silly, but I genuinely did not know you could do that.
Learning from Mar's approach helped me take a step back from my work and treat it more like a project than the next stage of my life. I did more research than I normally do. And I felt more comfortable taking the time to think, go on walks by the sea, and let the ideas marinate, rather than forcing myself to sit and push words around on paper. The setting allowed me to take a step back, which I generally don’t do enough of. I didn’t rush into a particular direction with the series or fold under the pressure of a short timeframe. I actually got to enjoy the process.
As part of the residency’s activities, you gave a talk alongside Catalan writer Mar Picò Raquel. What is one thing you discussed that left a mark on you and is there any reflection you hope the audience left with after the talk?
Mar and I spoke about the importance of having the time, space, and resources to write. These sound basic, but unlike other professions, you don’t always necessarily have these as a given. If you don’t have the privilege of a publishing contract or paid brief, whatever you’re writing is off of your own back. For me, that’s meant working other jobs in order to support my craft. I often do the work before seeing any pay—it’s a risk I take on myself. In this respect, I hope the audience understands the importance of supporting artists through commissioning, fair payment, and genuine consideration of what it means to be a working artist. You can’t write if you can’t eat.