Natasha Junejo has been writing under a pseudonym for ten years. Through her writing she has been invited to speak on BBC Woman’s Hour, Lena Dunham’s Women of The Hour, BBC Asian Network, City Radio, and Europe & Me.
In the wake of the EU Referendum result, Natasha co-founded two social justice movements focused on exposing and fighting racism and xenophobia that gained worldwide press attention and influenced government policy.
She is the founder of South Asian Writers, a hashtag that went viral in 2017, inviting writers of South Asian descent to introduce themselves and their work. Over one long weekend, 3,000,000 people from all over the world engaged with the hashtag. South Asian Writers has since flourished and aims to platform and uplift writers from the SA community through; features, book launches, author interviews, speaking events, and collaborative visual ethnography projects like, Our Stories Matter. #SouthAsianWriters continues to be used today across Instagram and Twitter as a portal for writers from the diaspora to share their work and connect with one another.
Natasha is passionate about creating access and opportunity for marginalised people and is committed to this fight at every level of society. She is currently developing a television and film writing programme across the US and UK for BIPOC writers and writers from underrepresented communities who have little to no prior experience in this area.
In 2018, Natasha was a national finalist in Penguin Random House’s Editorial Scheme and she now proudly leads the Literary arm of the UK’s first ever South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM). SAHM is part of the British National Calendar and runs every year from 18th July – 17th August. In 2020, a small team of four people ran the festival online during the pandemic with 87.2 million impressions and a reach of 31.1 million, across news and social networks. In 2021, SAHM’s online engagement skyrocketed to 269.3 million impressions with a reach of 77.7 million.
Since 25th February 2022, Natasha has been part of the relief effort to safely evacuate and house non EU national students that have been trapped in Ukraine during the ongoing conflict with Russia. Most of these students are African medical and engineering students who were barred from evacuating safely, and were denied access at border points due to the colour of their skin. Natasha has been working with a global network of volunteers to provide access to medical care and supplies, crisis relief and evacuation, accommodation, and mental health support. She is also the UK and Europe Lead for Education with, Black Foreigners In Ukraine working to ensure that, after all the horrific things these students have been through, we can provide a stable environment for them to continue their studies in Europe and allow them flourish in safety and without prejudice.
You can follow Natasha on:
Instagram
@sthasianwriters
@natasha.junejo
Twitter
@sthasianwriters
@natashajunejo
And catch her on the new Our Stories Matter project, The Decolonial Podcast. Where Natasha Junejo and poet and activist, Maya Kalaria explore how we can nurture and empower the BIPOC community by dismantling harmful colonial narratives with open conversations rooted in self love and antiracism
southasianwriters.com 