Raising the profile of South Asian writers since 2007
An exhibition of new artworks exploring The Partition of India in 1947 has opened at Soho House in Birmingham. The People of Partition in Birmingham is a new exhibition which explores how people living in Birmingham understand the 1947 Partition of India. The exhibition has been curated by artist Tasawar Bashir, in collaboration with 20 volunteers from the West …
At a time of political instability, many in the UK are clinging to the old, old story that has shaped our beliefs and values for the last fifty years. The old boys’ network that has held sway over British society for centuries is losing its shine, if not its power. While some desperately cling to …
My mother and grandmother told me folktales and myths in Gujarati. I read a lot as a kid too. My twin brother and I would go each week to the mobile library just beyond Hermitage Road in Loughborough. There we’d explore everything from Roald Dahl to Harriet the Spy to the Greek Myths. The librarian …
This month’s feature puts a spotlight on UK based writers who have found publication success in India. We spoke to India’s youngest literary agent, Kanishka Gupta of Writers Side, to gain an insight into how the UK publishing industry is perceived by those trying to place their books in the UK market. As a literary …
This month’s feature puts a spotlight on UK based writers who have found publication success in India and yet, at home, their novels remain unpublished. Here, we profile just three writers, Anita Srivakumaran, Mona Dash and Sarvat Hasin but there are many, many more. These writers not only face logistical challenges in terms of marketing …
Q. Where did the inspiration for Home Fire, and to write a contemporary version of Sophocles Antigone, come from? The inspiration came entirely from Jatinder Verma who runs the Tara Arts theatre in London. He suggested that I might adapt Antigone in a contemporary context as a play. Once I started to think about it though, I realised …
Q. Where did the inspiration for The Stolen Child come from? A friend of a friend wanted to adopt a child. She’d heard of a woman who was being forced to give up her baby because the mother was a drug addict. I thought, what if that child was adopted and went to a lovely …
Vaseem Khan wrote his first novel at seventeen. As a bright young man on the cusp of adulthood he printed out his work, read through it and thought it was amazing. Publishers didn’t agree, and after receiving his first rejection letter, Khan decided to listen to his parents’ advice and went off to university to …
Mahsuda Snaith’s mesmerising first novel The Things We Thought We Knew is a story full of twists and turns that blurs the lines between reality, memory and imagination. Eighteen year-old Ravine Roy has been bed-bound due to chronic pain syndrome for the last eleven years. From her bed, Ravine describes the Leicester council estate where …
The Things I Would Tell You is a collection of new writing by British Muslim women, edited by writer Sabrina Mahfouz. The project started life more than two years ago and stemmed from Mahfouz’s work with high school girls. “There was nothing to go to, to see the wealth of writing that has come from …