Stories with Oil Stains: The World of Women Digest Writers in Pakistan

Drawing on twenty months of fieldwork conducted in four urban cities and villages in two provinces in Pakistan, this work presents an ethnographic account of women fiction writers' engagement with the digest genre (published in commercial monthly magazines) and the community (of readers and writers) formed around it. These fictional stories are extremely popular. However, they are socially perceived as 'low brow' and disavowed as having no literary merit. In this
context, this research traces the specific forms attachment, articulation, and agency take in the lives of women whose stories resonate with many, but who also face the critique of not being authentic writers.