Raising the profile of South Asian writers since 2007
Q. You’ve had a great year. Congratulations! Did it feel good from a writing perspective, or was it distracting? It felt good. My work got into the hands of more readers than it would have done otherwise – that’s a wonderful feeling. But, it’s true: I’ve written nary (a regional word for ‘not’) a word …
AA Dhand When Ali met Honour is a refreshing look into a seldom explored genre and brilliantly written by two debuts authors. Ali is a British Asian who is involved with Honour, a middle-class English girl. The co-writers, Dimmi Khan and Antsey Spraggan write from the points of view of Ali and Honour respectfully. The book …
As someone who once sat in front of an editor and pitched an ‘Asian Bridget Jones saves publishing industry’* feature idea I was thrilled to hear about the publication of Ayisha Malik’s debut novel, Sofia Khan’s Not Obliged. Was my wishful thinking finally coming true? Could this be a thing? In Sofia Khan we find a …
Women Who Write with Elves is a group of nine writers who met through the Open University. Scattered from Scotland to Switzerland, we keep in touch via an online forum. Once a year we meet for a creative writing break which is stimulating, educational and far from the relaxing holiday some of us hope …
Small Hands by Mona Arshi This debut collection is small but perfectly formed. The poems are diverse, each deeply personal which offer insight into the poet’s world – her culture, her family life, the loss of a brother which propel to keep reading. Expect to be inspired, this one left me self-reflecting and wondering. wet …
Q. What’s the response been like to your collection, Small Hands? Wonderful. Humbling. I think because because the writing travels through elegy, fantasy and uses form it seems as if everyone has his or her favourite poem. Being shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best first collection was a huge honour particularly as it was …
What inspired this new piece of theatre? When I first came to live in the UK in the late 1990’s, I noticed particularly South Asian women of the first generation of migrants wearing saris much like my mother and aunts would back home although with heavy winter coats and cardigans. The sari was not just …
by Leila Rasheed I’m going to start with a story about stories, one of the incidents that made me realise that I had to make Megaphone a reality. I was sitting in the café in Birmingham’s new central library. At the table next to me were four children, aged perhaps eleven. Two boys and two …
Q. Tell us about the inspiration behind your latest poetry collection, wet silence? I would say there were several inspirations accumulated over the years that inspired “Wet Silence.” But the main was what NovelistChimamanda Adichie’s beautifully shared in one of her Ted Talks: the fear of just one story representing an entire culture. India is a big country and …
Q. Where did your journey of writing poetry begin? Very atypically, I can pinpoint an exact moment where I had a damascene conversion – where poetry very suddenly entered my life properly, for the first time. Back in about 2008 I was in the big Borders on Oxford Street in London, idly browsing – I’d …