Six decades after his death, Saadat Hasan Manto continues to haunt us with an uncanny fascination. There is a spurt of literary and cinematic interest in the life and works of one of the strongest literary voices of the subcontinent. Able translators are making his works accessible to the English
Sharanya Manivannan weaves a rich tapestry with the fine threads of love in her newly released book of short fiction titled The High Priestess Never Marries. The love that permeates these pages is a difficult one. Here, the self is the only constant, longing and heartbreak unearth discomfiting vulnerability, and
With inputs by Sharon IraniFirst Hand, a graphic non-fiction anthology, is a work of narrative density, comprising 22 stories from a diverse selection of researchers, journalists, filmmakers, designers, anthropologists, and academicians, which are then further presented in the six sub-genres of Oral History, Autobiography, Commentary, Reportage, Biography, and Documentary. While
On a particularly sunny morning in Bandra, I woke up one day to a phone call from my mother. She and I conversed in our native language, Tamil. After a hasty breakfast, I left for a meeting. Almost at my destination, I was lost, and I asked a security guard
New husbands are like burrs: they stick, they irritate, and they’re mostly unwanted. Mine turns to me and says, "Do you know that Gangtok is the only part of our country from where you can see another country?" He beams at me as though I’m a
Powerful art and conflict have had a long history of courtship. Take, for example, Maus by Art Spiegelman, Palestine by Joe Sacco, or Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, the genre-defining graphic novels that gave rise to this form of visceral documentation. Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir by Malik Sajad (Purchase) My
There is a certain sense of trepidation and intrigue that grips you almost instantly when you begin reading Black Mumba. A crowdfunded noir graphic novel created and written by Ram Venkatesan (author of the Aghori series), Black Mumba is characterised by swathes of ink and layered narratives that showcase a
Early in Aliyyah Eniath’s debut novel The Yard, we come across “callaloo”, a quintessentially Trinidadian word, which for me is the summation of both the stylistic and narrative choices employed in this debut work of fiction. Callaloo, being a Caribbean creole word for a soup or stew made with
As we prepare to announce the submission guidelines for our upcoming New Writing anthology---you can buy the latest edition of the anthology here---we thought it'd be a good idea to follow up our earlier list of places to submit creative writing in India and South Asia with more
Aditi Angiras is a Delhi poet and activist who believes that poetry is politics. She founded a spoken word poetry collective called Bring Back the Poets that engages with gender, sexuality, and politics in the city and the country. In March this year, Bring Back the Poets organised an international
Revathy V K is a multifaceted artist whose journeys into photography and writing have intertwined seamlessly. Last year, she showcased her series of photographs that captured a poignant tale of two Indian women falling out of love at 'Homomorphism', a group exhibition on queer art at Durbar Hall
The Helter Skelter Anthology of New Writing: Volume Five. Photograph by Aamir Rangwalla. Helter Skelter Magazine's New Writing section was started in 2012 as a way to promote emerging writers and poets in India; to create a space for original, fresh short fiction and poetry.The first four