Raising the profile of South Asian writers since 2007
by Catherine Coe I’ve been a children’s book editor for twenty years, and a freelancer for the last ten. As well as working for publishers and literary agents, I have many clients who are writers – usually those who are yet to be published and agented, helping them to develop their craft and evolve their …
I first heard about the Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition while I was studying for the MA Creative Writing course where I wrote a first draft of my debut Asha and the Spirit Bird. Once I had completed the course it took me a whole year of editing before I felt the manuscript was ready to send out. …
When the BBC televised its first episode of A Suitable Boy, I recalled reading it as a 15-year-old but retained nothing except the romantic angle (Saeeda-Maan, Lata-Kabir). So, I got out my dusty paperback from the shelf to see what I had missed and discovered so much more. Reading the story is like a mammoth …
by Kia Abdullah It started with a disastrous radio slot. I was invited onto a programme along with authors Nikesh Shukla, A A Dhand and Mariam Khan to look at why British Asian authors are underrepresented in publishing. Sadly, we were asked to go over the same old ground: ‘Does diversity lower standards?’ ‘Do writers …
The cover A Summary The Cure For a Crime is about the twins, Ali and Tulip, whose Mum has got a strange new boyfriend, Brian Sturgeon the Brain Surgeon. Suddenly Mum falls ill, a fever maybe? No, it is a strange new virus and Brian Sturgeon is No.1 on the twins’ suspect list. Oh no, …
by Farah Damji I helped to set up The View Magazine, a publication by and for women in the criminal justice system, with three other women with conviction because nothing like it exists. The current prison publications are aimed at men and women are only mentioned as an afterthought. The View Magazine is a voice …
by Leela Soma Set in South India, in the tiny cantonment of Nandagiri The Tainted by Cauvery Madhavan traces the lives of the Anglo-Indian community. They belong nowhere, not to the ruling Raj, or the local community, tainted by their mixed blood. The love story between Private Michael Flaherty of the Royal Irish Kildare Rangers …
by Jude Higgins Flash fiction is a form of short short fiction that, in recent years, has been growing in popularity worldwide. To qualify as a ‘flash’, stories must be 1000 words or less and many writers write to a 500 or 300 word limit. The skill in writing these tiny tales is to successfully …
Rehearsal Room 1 of Leicester’s Curve Theatre has mirrored walls, free-standing doors, and a staircase to nowhere. An appropriate setting for the inaugural Crossroads Festival, which aimed “to support writers by offering advice and inspiration through a series of talks and workshops”. However, it did more than that. Like its base room, the festival was …
‘Imagine building an observatory over St. Paul’s Cathedral?’ A provocative question posed by Amitav Ghosh at the National Book Festival, in D.C. Ghosh was replying to a question posed by Bilal Quershi, a reporter with the National Public Radio at an event in Washington D.C. on his new and fascinating book Gun Island. He also referred to Mauna Kea in Hawaii …