Six Writers. Six Stories. Six Weeks
Digital Fiction from Penguin
Penguin has launched its most ambitious digital writing project to date. In collaboration with fêted alternate reality game designers SixtoStart (http://www.sixtostart.com/) Penguin has challenged some of its top authors to create new forms of story – designed specially for the internet.
Over six weeks, writers including Booker-shortlisted MOHSIN HAMID, popular teen author KEVIN BROOKS, prize-winning NAOMI ALDERMAN, bestselling thriller author NICCI FRENCH, young British novelist TOBY LITT, popular thriller author CHARLES CUMMING, and debut author MATT MASON, will be pushing the envelope and creating …

 The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman, today announces the 2008 longlist. Now in its thirteenth year, the Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing.Anita Amirrezvani The Blood of Flowers (Headline Review) Iranian/
American (1st Novel)
Stella Duffy The Room of Lost Things (Virago) British (11th Novel)
Jennifer Egan The Keep (Abacus) American (3rd Novel)
Anne Enright The Gathering (Jonathan Cape) Irish (4th Novel)
Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs (Virago) British (4th Novel)
Tessa Hadley The Master Bedroom (Jonathan Cape) British …

Zed has been a short story writer and poet for the past six years. He first began writing for his university newspaper as an agony uncle and after taking a course in film and media, worked as a film critic between 2004 and 2006. His volunteer work in numerous theatre productions encouraged him to explore plays and fiction and wrote his first short story in 2006, which was published an American publication targeted for the South-Asian community. Currently, he’s working on a personal project of adapating Dante’s Inferno for television. …

Satis Shroff is a prolific writer, lecturer and poet based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) who also writes on ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes, and writes regularly for The American Chronicle (www.Amchron.com), and is a contributing writer on www.boloji.com and also Blog.ch. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Science in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and Manchester. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize. …

Europe and South Asia Region Winners Announced:
Indra Sinha wins Best Book Award for Animal’s People
Tahmima Anam wins Best First Book Award for A Golden Age
An international judging panel has awarded the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award, Europe and South Asia Region, to Animal’s People by Indra Sinha (India). The Best First Book Award was awarded to A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (Bangladesh). Each author wins £1,000 and goes into the next stage of the competition to find the overall Commonwealth Best Book and Best First Book, which …

Over a hundred aspiring writers attended the first ever Writing Industries Conference held at Loughborough University on Saturday 9th February 2008.Keynote speaker, Stephen Booth, delivered an inspiring and original speech reminding writers of their fundamental right – and that is, to be paid for what they do! Writing is a business, which generates £60 billion as an industry with the average author only earning £16,500. In order for writers to be successful and make a career from writing they must embrace marketing and view their writing as a business. This …

Vikram Kapur currently teaches creative writing School of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and reading his PhD.He has two novels published and has received a Breadloaf scholarship, a
Vermont Studio Center fellowship, a Wesleyan scholarship and a Squaw Valley Community of Writers scholarship, among other awards. His work has featured across the globe, in India, the US and here in the UK, notably in New Writing, Spiked, The Seattle Times, Calliope, The Hindu and The Pioneer. This is an extract from his short story, Unlike Water.
After …

Palo was born in the Punjab but has spent most of her life in the Glasgow area. She began writing three years ago after retiring from local government education department. She is currently writing her first novel as part of a postgraduate degree in creative writing at the University of Strathclyde. This is an extract from her story, Basant.
His brother had died that morning just as the cock crowed and the cold, hazy winter sun bathed the village with light. Those seated around the dead man had been waiting. Quickly two of them …

T S Abhilash  was born in 1981 , a Graduate in T V Digital Cinematography from Film & Television Institute of India. He currently lives in Kochi. 
The vendor selling fruits on his trolley with little paint left on it was crying and shouting loud, ‘Ber-le lo- Ber’ (*1) in the busy market of Mandai. The sun was scorching down upon him from right above. He felt the heat. He looked up with his eyes half open and half shut. Salty sweat ran down from his scalp, running over his forehead with four creases, still …

Leela Soma lives in Scotland where she works as a Principal Teacher in Glasgow. She recently won the Margaret Thompson Davis Trophy for the first 10,00 words of a novel. This is an extract from her short story Ayah which has previously been published in SQA’s new ‘Write Times’. 
It was a tropical night, a heavy navy curtained sky lit up by the silvery stars. She is too tired to look up, she walks in, locks the flimsy door. Ayah takes in the scene; her little one room outhouse with the asbestos roof is …