Raising the profile of South Asian writers since 2007
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 …
With falling author earnings it is common for writers to supplement their income with teaching or part time work. But the portfolio career or ‘slashie’ – juggling two or three entirely different careers at the same time – is a new way of working and it’s on the rise. Crime writer Vaseem Khan tells us …
Meena Kandasamy’s latest novel, Exquisite Cadavers began as a response to her second novel, When I Hit You. It follows the story of a young married couple as they navigate life and love in London and is an experimental project where Kandasamy attempts to write a story as far removed from her own as possible. …
In her breath-taking new novel, Exquisite Cadavers Meena Kandasamy raises the curtain and invites the reader into what is often seen as a mysterious process. Sitting neatly in the margins Kandasamy dissects her creative process revealing how her ideas are worked into fiction. I begin by asking Kandasamy whether writing Exquisite Cadavers made her feel …
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 …
Toni Morrison said that if the book you want to read isn’t out there, write it yourself. So I did. I wrote it over a year-and-a-half and called it Strange. Growing up, I read voraciously, and short stories were a particular favourite. I especially enjoyed the ones with cleverly constructed plots that culminated in deliciously …
In 2011 I had travelled to Jaipur Literary Festival, THE JLF in Jaipur. It was a gigantic affair with all the glamour that the beautiful pink city could muster. Held in the Diggi Palace, and in shamianas that are so very colourful, the ‘greatest literary show on Earth’ which is patronised by a million booklovers …
When did you know you had a story in you that you wanted to share? Many years ago, when my baby boy became ill, and the word SCID entered my life, I thought, one day, I would write about it to increase awareness about this rare and fatal condition. I was however conscious that I …