Jannatun N. Prity

Jannatun Nayeem Prity is an award-winning Bengali writer, artist, and activist. She has published nine literary works, including novels, short story collections, children’s books, and an autobiography. Both her written and artistic work focus on women’s rights, systemic gender discrimination and has criticised government corruption resulting in failure to tackle endemic social injustice in Bangladesh. Jannatun Nayeem Prity’s work and activism have made her a target for harassment and abuse from government aligned groups and actors, forcing her to flee her home country.

Best known as a writer, Prity’s first work was the children’s book How the Name Bangladesh was Formed, centred around Bangladesh’s War of Independence, published in 2013. In recognition of her achievement, UNICEF Bangladesh awarded her the 2014 Meena Media Award for under-18s Creative Writing. Jannatun Nayeem Prity published three additional literary works in 2016- a collection of short stories, an autobiography, titled Nineteen Springs, and another children’s book, Story Drawn with Pencil. In more recent years, Prity has continued to be a prolific writer, publishing the book The Pulse of Women (2017), comprised of excerpts from her columns in print media. In 2015, Jannatun Nayeem Prity received her second Meena Media Award for her journalistic work. Her most recent publication called Time to Break the Lock (2020) features several short fictional stories focusing on issues of women’s rights and the impunity for perpetrators of rape. Jannatun Nayeem Prity has also written a screenplay for the short film ‘The Poster’ (2014), for which she received several awards, including ‘Best Short Film’ at the 2014 Chennai Women’s Film Festival and ‘Best Film’ at the 2015 International Children's Film Festival in Dhaka.

As an artist, Prity holds a BA in Fine Arts at Jahangirnagar University in Bangladesh and has received numerous awards for her painting. These include the National Child Award from 2003 to 2005, the Surf Excel Painting Carnival Award in 2003, and the Faber Castell International Art Competition in 2006. More recently, Jannatun Nayeem Prity’s art has branched out to include sculpting and fashion design.

Due to her increasing prominence and media attention, Prity faced intensifying threats and harassment on social media, over the phone and in person, leading her to leave her home country. She arrived in France in 2022, where she took up the ICORN residency in Paris for the period 2022-2024.