Kavita Jindal wins The Haruki Murakami short story competition

Poet and fiction writer Kavita Jindal has won this year’s  Haruki Murakami short story competition. Organised by Foyles, and judged by Haruki Murakami’s publisher, Liz Foley of Harvill Secker. Haruki picked a line from his latest work, 1Q84 and writers were invited to write a short story of no more than 1500 words with the …

Mustafa Abubaker

Mustafa Abubaker (pictured on the left) with actor and comedian, Aziz Ansari Q. Please tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into writing? I’m a freshman at High PointUniversityin North Carolinabut I live in Atlanta, Georgia. I got into writing as early as the fifth grade when my class was assigned to …

Chinaman wins the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature

  The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2012 was awarded to Singapore based Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka for his debut Chinaman (Johnathon Cape). The $50,000 (around £32k) DSC Prize 2012 was awarded to Shehan Karunatilaka at a ceremony attended by eminent literary figures, renowned authors and a diverse literary audience at this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival. Ira …

Man Asian Literary Prize Shortlist

A River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh is just one of the titles shortlisted An unprecedented seven novels have been shortlisted for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize, Chair Judge Razia Iqbal announced today. Speaking at a press conference at Man Group offices in London, Ms. Iqbal revealed that because of the strength of contemporary …

The Asian Writer New Writing Competition – Winners

I’m pleased to announce the winning entry for The Asian Writer New Writing Competition…   (drum roll)   Well done to GD Stickland (who you may remember also won the poetry category in our 2008 competition).   Roads, North and South A pantoum My friend, when you were only four and dreaming of owning a …

Two Asian authors make Guardian First Book Award 2011 shortlist

The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed and  The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee have both made the shortlist for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award. The award which recognises the finest new authors who have had their first book published in English in the last year. A winner will be now be selected by …

Leela Soma

Q. Please tell us a bit about yourself and how you launched into a writing career? I had always been surrounded by books and writing. Grandpa, dad, some aunts and uncles all lawyers were all involved in writing and editing Law Journals in India so from birth books were part of my upbringing. I used …

Sweta Vikram

On the release of her recent novel, Perfectly Untraditional, The Asian Writer caught up with author and poet Sweta Vikram