Rana Dasgupta becomes Best Book Winner of The Commonwealth Writers Prize (April 12, 2010)
The judges chose Solo for its innovation, ambition, courage and effortlessly elegant prose. A remarkable novel of two halves, this is a book that takes risks and examines the places where grim reality and fantastical daydreams merge, diverge, and feed off each other. Solo, the judges concluded, is a tour de force, breathtaking in its boldness and narrative panache. The Best Book Winner takes home a £10,000 prize. Glenda Guest, …

The Asia House Festival of Asian Literature returns to London from 5th – 27th May 2010. Now in its 4th year, the Festival will host 20 talks and events by 40 acclaimed writers working in and writing on the region.
The line up of speakers includes established and emerging talents: Author of Songs of Blood and Sword, Fatima Bhutto; writer and historian William Dalrymple; author of A Life Apart, Neel Mukherjee; biographer Hilary Spurling; author and commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown; poet Daljit Nagra; writer Victoria Schofield and author and broadcaster John …

The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature to celebrate the rich and varied literature connected to the subcontinent has been announced. The prize will award US$50,000 to the winner starting from 2011. The award will recognize writers of any ethnicity writing about South Asia and its Diasporas. The books competing for the prize must be an original work of fiction published during 1st April 2009 and 31st March 2010, written in English or translated into English.
The judging panel for the DSC prize will comprise persons of eminence in literature, arts …

With an anticipated forty events over ten days, the DSC South Asian Literature Festival is to be Britain’s major event celebrating the rich and varied cultures of the South Asian region, through the world of literature.
The Festival stream of events will be held at cutting-edge London arts venues including Kings Place (King’s Cross), Rich Mix (Shoreditch) and Free Word Centre (Clerkenwell). Well-known establishments such as the British Library will also feature in the programme.
The DSC South Asian Literature Festival will explore the languages and literature of South Asia through music, …

The Writing Industries Conference 2010 took place March 6th, 2010.
The tone of the day was set by Graham Joyce’s fabulous key note speech. Which you can listen to in its entirety by clicking here.
It was hard for anything to follow that. Everything that needed to be said was, and I had the pleasure of congratulating Graham (notice how we’re on first name terms ) later in the Green Room (another perk of being on the panel!). He placed great emphasis on DIVERSIFICATION and INDEPENDENCE and challenged us to think beyond …