Pen Canada’s Writer in Exile
Dr. Shumaila Hemani
Writer, ethnomusicologist, and facilitator exploring how story, sound, and deep listening can shift systems
Dr. Shumaila Hemani is an award-winning writer, ethnomusicologist, musician, and public advocate whose work advances freedom of expression for artists and communities affected by censorship, displacement, and structural silencing. She is a PEN Canada Writer in Exile, working at the intersection of cultural rights, migration, mental health, and artistic freedom.
Addressing freedom of expression under authoritarian regimes, Hemani published a global call to support Afghan musicians facing death threats by the Taliban in The Conversation (2021) and Arts Desk UK (2021). Her essays and creative writing similarly interrogate the silencing and appropriation of artists. Her short story Catabasis received a jury commendation in the International Human Rights Arts Movement’s special issue on Hannah Arendt (forthcoming).
Her memoir, Writing in the Wound, opens public discourse on the mental-health impacts of immigration precarity amongst former post-graduate work permit holders-an issue that remains suppressed within Canadian media.
Hemani’s public leadership has also brought global issues—including climate justice in the Global South, immigrant mental health, and cultural silencing—into Canadian civic and artistic forums, including Music Declares Emergency, University of Hawaii’s Climate Change and South Asia Conference, Map the Systems Canada Finals.
Her work has been recognized with several awards, including the Cultural Diversity Award (2016) and inclusion in the Women in Music Canada Honour Roll (2023), and she has been nominated for the Ken Filkow Prize for extending freedom of expression in Canada (2026).
“Such a powerful and deeply moving essay. Hemani’s reflection on inhabiting the space between visibility and invisibility, voice and enforced silence, captures with extraordinary force the human reality behind Hannah Arendt’s insight that rights depend upon a political world willing to see and recognize us.”
— Professor Roger Berkowitz, Director, Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, Bard College
“Shumaila Hemani‘s work is multifaceted, beautifully lyrical, and crystal clear. She’s a gem in the Canadian arts community. ”
— Barb Howard, author of Happy Sands (University of Calgary Press)
Dr. Shumaila Hemani — Shifting Systems through Storytelling & Sounds
As an author and artist living and working in Mohkinstsis (Calgary), I acknowledge that this work unfolds on the traditional and ancestral lands of the peoples of Treaty 7, including the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani), the Tsuut’ina Nation, and the Îyârhe Nakoda Nations (Bearspaw, Chiniki, and Goodstoney). This territory is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3.<br>As a guest on these lands, I approach my work with humility and with a commitment to listening—to the land, to the stories that precede my own, and to the communities who have cared for these territories across generations.
Your support for this work not only nurtures your own creative and emotional well-being, but also helps sustain an independent space for collective listening and care.
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So-called Calgary, AB Canada
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