Sweta Srivastava Vikram

Q. The collection, Saris and a Single Malt really works as a whole piece, with each individual poem moving you along the journey from your mother being unwell, her death, to coming to terms with her death. Was the poetry always with you during this tumultuous time? Poetry and pain never left my side—from the …

Mary Mount on PRH’s #WriteNow initiative

Interview with Mary Mount, a fiction editor at Viking, part of Penguin Random House UK. Mary has published authors including John le Carré, Hisham Matar, Colm Tóibín, Naomi Alderman and Nina Stibbe.   Q. We’re really excited about the #WriteNow initiative. Why is Penguin Random House reaching out to marginalised writers? Books and writers are …

Between two worlds

by Anam Hussain With one foot in the English rain and the other in tropical summer, I hang in between Earlier this year, when one figure changed from five to six, our phones, so unmoved and unaffected, mutely discarded 2015. The BBC hosted a season of identity 2016, a month long series of programmes, exploring …

Sharon Duggal

Q. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you started your writing journey? Like most writers I have always written in one way or another but as a working parent with three children it was never going to be easy to make it a priority, at least not until the kids were a bit …

The Good Immigrant

What are the experiences of a generation born to immigrant parents in the UK? A collection of personal essays edited by Nikesh Shukla and crowdfunded via Unbound explore race in Britain through the eyes of a new wave of creatives: actors, poets, artists and novelists. This smorgasbord of opinion and experiences is refreshing. Each writer …

Streets of Darkness

I admit I was reluctant to pick up A. A. Dhand’s debut novel, Streets of Darkness, even more so, to pen this review. I’ve dipped my toe into the genre of crime fiction before only to find the writing didn’t appeal or to lose myself literally in all the action. But having published Dhand’s blog, …

#PitchCB

#PitchCB is a Twitter pitch party run by Curtis Brown on the fourth Friday of each month. #PitchCB opportunity for writers to pitch their completed works directly to agents. All you need to do is tweet your pitch using the hashtag #PitchCB. If an agent marks your tweet as a favourite you then submit your …

Jasmine

The novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, first published in 1989, is one that is primarily interested in the discussion of immigration experience in the United States. Though utilising fantasy elements in the narrative, the story tells a harrowing tale of the protagonist Jyoti and the challenges she faces in assimilating into American society. The novel …

Family Life by Akhil Sharma wins the 2016 International DUBLIN Literary Award

American author Akhil Sharma has won the 2016 International DUBLIN Literary Award for his novelFamily Life. The Award is organised and sponsored by Dublin City Council and at €100,000 is the world’s largest prize for a single novel published in English. Uniquely, the Award receives its nominations from public libraries in cities around the globe …

The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown

The second novel in the much-loved Baby Ganesh Detective Agency series is out now (May 5, 2016). Following the success of  The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra  Vaseem Khan’s second adventure sees retired Inspector Ashwin Chopra swept up in a maelstrom of trouble and danger in Mumbai. When the Koh-i-Noor diamond is stolen from an exhibition of …