The Home of British Asian Writing
When the BBC televised its first episode of A Suitable Boy, I recalled reading it as a 15-year-old but retained nothing except the romantic angle (Saeeda-Maan, Lata-Kabir). So, I got out my dusty paperback from the shelf to see what I had missed and discovered so much more. Reading the story is like a mammoth …
Tell us about your novel, Beautiful Place and what inspired you to write it? Beautiful Place is set in a villa by a remote beach on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, and follows the lives of its owners, their friends and the guests who arrive to stay as the villa opens as a guesthouse. …
by Alia Raffia It was during a family trip to the magical city of Lahore aged fourteen that I fell in love with Mughal art. My brother and I went on adventures together and visited places like Lahore Fort, Shalimar Gardens and Wazir Khan Mosque as well as the streets of the old city. The …
When did you have the initial idea for Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line? When I was working as a reporter in India, I came across stories of real-life disappearances of children; that was the initial spark for the novel. I was writing on education and human rights, as part of which I often interviewed …
The cover A Summary The Cure For a Crime is about the twins, Ali and Tulip, whose Mum has got a strange new boyfriend, Brian Sturgeon the Brain Surgeon. Suddenly Mum falls ill, a fever maybe? No, it is a strange new virus and Brian Sturgeon is No.1 on the twins’ suspect list. Oh no, …
The Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction, a short story award which promotes science fiction and related genres is now open for entries. Now in its fourth year the prize aims to encourage and inspire writers from Pakistan to unleash their creative potential. The scope of the prize is broad and encompasses everything from science fiction …
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 …