Raising the profile of South Asian writers since 2007
The vendor selling fruits on his trolley with little paint left on it was crying and shouting loud, ‘Ber-le lo- Ber’ (*1) in the busy market of Mandai. The sun was scorching down upon him from right above. He felt the heat. He looked up with his eyes half open and half shut. Salty sweat …
Leela Soma lives in Scotland where she works as a Principal Teacher in Glasgow. She recently won the Margaret Thompson Davis Trophy for the first 10,00 words of a novel. This is an extract from her short story Ayah which has previously been published in SQA’s new ‘Write Times’. It was a tropical night, a heavy navy curtained …
Why should she feel as though she is living in somebody else’s house? It was hers by right. She had been the one to marry him and move with him to a house that resembled a hotel after all. The rooms do not feel as though they belong to her somehow, pale washes of blue …
Ashanti OMkar is a journalist, poet, presenter, singer and overall media person based in London. Born in Sri Lanka and raised in Nigeria she spent her teens in the UK and later graduated from The University of London. She left behind a flourishing IT career, having worked for the likes of Oracle, Business Objects and Pepsi …
It was in the middle of the Great Fudge Recession that Fudgie Fudgerson decided he needed to do something about the fudge crisis that was hampering the government’s efforts to boost the country’s morale. Fudge prices were at an all-time high. They had invaded neighbouring countries for their Weapons of Mass Fudging, only to find …
Integrate! Assimilate! I have given up my sari, I have given up my bindi I wear your dress I don your make up. I have given up my language, I speak yours, Och aye the noo, I buy my ‘messages’ not send them, I ‘flit’ when I move house, If yous cannae make it out, …
Abhijiit Dasgupta is an Indian editor with over twenty five years. He currently works in Kolkata as the editor of India Today. He has recently completed his debut novel The Vice Song. Anirban always thought he was like a flower. Small, pink, slightly soiled, the sort you see lying unheeded beside some trees in a …
Early Morning Two friends playing with marbles on the dark smooth ground under the soft chin of a tall shimul tree long beyond its bloom. The dust above them chewing the tree like a caterpillar. * They never asked why the sudden thunder of silence flickering in the tin sky wrenching the morning. Komol’s wren-boned …
Azma Dar is currently working on her debut novel aswell as a play based on a true story set in WW2, Noor, for which she received an Arts Council grant in 2006. Her first play Chaos, the story of a Muslim family, set in the aftermath of 9/11, was read as one of ten pieces in Kali …