South Asian Literary Festival: WRITING SHORT STORIES
Event Information
About this event
As part of the very first South Asian Literary Festival, we bring three fantastic authors to talk about 'Writing Short Stories'.
The panel will consist of Jenny Bhatt, Reshma Ruia, Sayantani Dasgupta
The discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A.
ABOUT SAYANTANI DASGUPTA
Born in Calcutta and raised in New Delhi, Sayantani Dasgupta received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho. She is the author of Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, & the In-Between—a Finalist for the Foreword Indies Awards for Creative Nonfiction—and the chapbook The House of Nails: Memories of a New Delhi Childhood. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The Hindu, The Rumpus, Scroll, Economic & Political Weekly, IIC Quarterly, Chicago Quarterly Review, and others. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA program at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and has also taught in India, Italy, and Mexico.
ABOUT JENNY BHATT
Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, and reviewer. She is a Contributing Editor at PopMatters. Her debut short story collection, Each of Us Killers: Stories, will be out with 7.13 Books in September 2020. Her literary translation of Dhumketu’s best short stories will be out in December 2020 with HarperCollins India.
Her non-fiction has appeared or is upcoming in, among others: The Atlantic, NPR, BBC, Washington Post, Literary Hub, Longreads, The Millions, Electric Literature, PopMatters, Scroll.in, and more. Her fiction has been published in Amazon’s Day One Literary Journal, Gravel Magazine, Lunch Ticket, Hofstra’s Windmill, Eleven Eleven Journal, Hot Metal Bridge, Jet Fuel Review, Kweli Journal, Five:2:One, etc. Her short stories have been nominated multiple times for Pushcart Prizes and the Best American Short Stories anthology. She has been a Best of the Net Anthology finalist.
Having lived and worked her way around India, England, Germany, Scotland, and various parts of the US, she now lives in a suburb of Dallas, Texas.
ABOUT RESHMA RUIA
Reshma Ruia is an award winning writer and poet. Her first novel, ‘Something Black in the Lentil Soup’, was described in the Sunday Times as ‘a gem of straight-faced comedy.’ Her second novel manuscript, ‘A Mouthful of Silence’ was shortlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Award.
Her writing has appeared in The Mechanics’ Institute Review, The Nottingham Review, Asia Literary Review, Confluence, Cabinet of Heed, Funny Pearls, Fictive Dream, The Good Journal, Sguardi Diversi and various anthologies such as Too Asian Not Asian Enough, No Good Deed, Love across a Broken Map and May We Borrow your Country among others. Her stories have also been commissioned by and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her debut collection of poetry, ‘A Dinner Party in the Home Counties,’ won the 2019Word Masala Award.
She is the co-founder of The Whole Kahani writers’ collective of British South Asian writers.
About the Festival:
All sessions will be LIVE online. Your dedicated link and password will be emailed to you on the day of the festival so please make sure you add an email address that you regularly use.
Follow the festival for updates on Twitter at @SAsianLitFest
All timings are in British Standard Time (BST).
