Raising the profile of South Asian writers since 2007
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 …
Poet in residence at Radio 4, Daljit Nagra will curate a series of new commissions in response to Europe’s second oldest poem, Homer’s The Odyssey. The Odyssey Project: My Name is Nobody will feature ten writers from various diasporas to create new radio poems. Showcased over a fortnight, the project will introduce the poets and …
Lawyers are experienced wordsmiths so it should come as no surprise that a new wave of novelists come from the profession. Are they giving up the law to write? In this feature we spotlight three lawyers who have turned their hand to fiction. It was Abda Khan’s experience as a solicitor that led her to …
Q. Tell us about your journey into writing crime fiction? Firstly can I just say thank you so much for this, it’s a big step being featured in TAW. So my writing journey has been an interesting one, I’ve written for years with various levels of success. My true passion though has always been crime. …
by Nilopar Uddin A damp evening in Manchester’s Dean Street, and Waterstones is brimming with eager faces. Speaking to the women sitting around me, I realise that Mohsin Hamid is something of a rockstar literati; this room is packed with fans who exhibit the effervescent excitement of groupies. Hamid, whose writings has been variously described …
by Tehseen Baweja How do you help somebody break free from the shackles of orthodoxy and conformity? This is a very real and deep-rooted problem in today’s Pakistani society with no simple answer. But one thing that is bound to help is encouraging those who dare to think outside the box, and The Salam Award …