One book, some fellowships & many updates!
Hello everyone, it’s wonderful to be in touch again. We’ve been super busy with fellowship zooms, our masterclasses and applications to our 2023 cohort. But we wanted to take the time to share some exciting updates. Here we go.
We’re delighted to announce that 2021 fellow Priyamvada Ramkumar has published her first book-length translation. Stories of the True is a Tamil-English translation of Jeyamohan’s collection Aram. It was published in August by Juggernaut. In a review in Mint Lounge critic Vangmayi Parakala wrote: “Despite working with this seemingly untranslatable heart, Ramkumar never lets go of the stories’ natural Tamil register. In at least the few pages on which I was able to do a side-by-side check, she goes sentence by sentence, not missing any detail from the original.”
Priyamvada’s mentor was Arunava Sinha.
We’re also thrilled for 2021 fellow Waseem Rashid , who has been awarded the first-ever Sonny Mehta Fellowship in Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Waseem Rashid was named fiction fellow. He was mentored by novelist Karan Mahajan.
And congratulations are also due to 2021 fellow Nikhil Eapen, who was awarded a place at the Logan Nonfiction Program. During his fellowship, Nikhil worked on a nonfiction book about the biodiversity crisis in South Asia told through the story of the near-extinction of Gyps vultures in the Indian sub-continent. Nikhil’s mentor was Sanam Maher.
And now on to our current class of fellows. From writing anti-caste articles to receiving PEN grants, here’s what our 2022 fellows are up to:
Suresh Gaikwad is working with Ambedkar International (US) to translate Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s Marathi works into English. He is also writing anti-caste articles for the Marathi fortnightly The People’s Post. His mentor is Mahesh Rao.
Bad Egg, written and directed by Mehak Jamal premiered at the 19th Indian Film Festival Stuttgart 2022 where it won the German Star of India - Audience Award. It has since traveled to film festivals in Melbourne, Kerala, Madrid, Chicago and Atlanta. Mehak’s mentor is Rahul Bhatia.
Sudeshna Rana is creating a digital archive ‘Dhanbad Journal’ on Instagram to document the work on her forthcoming book. Sudeshna contributed an article on misogyny and culture to Smashboard and wrote a review of the 1994 novel Fire Area by Ilyas Ahmed Gaddi. Her poetry appeared in Usawa Literary Review. Sudeshna’s mentor is Mira Kamdar.
Duaa Amir is also working on a digital archive, compiling an oral history of Pakistan’s feminist movement. To contribute your story please reach out to Duaa over Twitter. Her mentor is Sonia Faleiro.
Nicholas Rixon’s short story The Annual Pig Parade of Kharagpore is featured in A Case of Indian Marvels: Dazzling Stories from the Country’s Finest New Writers (Aleph Book Company, Sept 2022). Another short story, Dorothy Dancer Has Had Enough, is now available to read on Catapult. His mentor is Diksha Basu.
Riddhi Dastidar’s short story It Ends with a Kiss is also part of A Case of Indian Marvels. They have been reporting on mental health among small-town lesbians in India for QueerBeat, a project funded by a Pultizer Center grant and are now the managing editor of The Floating Magazine, a digital publication about visual art in Asia and the Middle East. Their mentor is Deepa Anappara.
Mariam Tareen’s short story Footprints in the Mud will be published in Risala Magazine, a literary print magazine for young people launching in September 2022. Their mentor is Fatima Bhutto.
Sumallya Mukhopadhyay’s On Memory and History based on the book Inherited Memories features in the latest issue of The Book Review Journal (Vol. 46, Issue 9, Sept. 2022). His review of Revisiting Partition has been published in The South Asian Diaspora, and his short story The House of Rizwan is forthcoming in a special issue designed by Association for Children’s Literature in South Asia. Sumallya’s mentor is Aanchal Malhotra.
Dixita Deka’s essay ‘Strawberry Farms: Adopting New Crops in Northeast India’ written with Dolly Kikon was published in Raiot. ‘An Indian in Dhanmondi 32’ was published in The Daily Star. Her review of Ambika Aiyadurai’s book Tigers are our Brothers: Anthropology of Wildlife Conservation in Northeast India is forthcoming in the LSE Review of Books. Her mentor is Samanth Subramanian.
Sharanya Deepak’s piece about the production of biscuits in the newly independent Indian nation-state appeared in Vittles. She also published a series of pieces in Whetstone and one in The Caravan based on her research into the history of famines in Rajasthan, She is in the class of the One World Media Fellowship for the year 2022-2023. Her mentor is Sanam Maher.
Saadullah Khan’s short story Animal Care is out in the sixth volume of The Aleph Review. He wrote five children’s storybooks for UNESCO Pakistan’s project on "Safeguarding Cultural Heritage Through Education". Saadullah’s mentor is Madhuri Vijay.
Zoya Rehman published an article on feminist digital labor and aesthetics for GenderIT.org as well as a dispatch on the floods in Pakistan for The Drift. She also presented a paper about online feminist organising in Pakistan at Tasavvur Collective's Symposium, ‘Writing Muslim Women in South Asia’. Her Mentor is Taran N. Khan.
Deepa Padmanaban reported and published articles on how Indian cities are developing climate action plans, what cities globally need to do to fight climate change, the need for ecosystems to be re-evaluated based on climate change vulnerability, and on a landslide reporting tool that uses social media and AI. Deepa is currently writing a long-form article on the management of natural disasters. Her mentor is McKenzie Funk.
Sanskrita Bharadwaj wrote a longform ground report about a community that was displaced from Mizoram and forced to migrate to Tripura. The story was supported by the Pulitzer Center and published in Scroll’s longform section, Common Ground. Sanskrita is also part of the Smitu Kothari Fellowship 2022 at the Centre for Financial Accountability. Her mentor is Marc Herman.
Suchismita Ghosh recently published her Bengali translation of Neel Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others (Onyoder jiban) with JUP. She has also been working as a volunteer translator for People’s Rural Archive of India. She is currently working on a Bengali translation of Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s My Father’s Garden, to be published by JUP in 2022. Her mentor is Arunava Sinha.
Kartikeya Jain, also mentored by Arunava Sinha, has been shortlisted for the first round of PEN Presents, English PEN’s new award for sample translations. ‘Descending to Earth: Rain in Mountain Literature’ published in The Kodai Chronicle. His translation of the short story ‘Halfway Companion’ by Shahadat was published in the September issue of Out of Print.
Anmol Arora published a feature on a tennis family from Rajasthan for Ozy, a review of a photography series documenting the lives of trans women in New Delhi for the August print edition of Vogue India, and other articles on mental health and wellness for Mint Lounge. An in-depth feature on the persecution of queer couples in India is upcoming in Xtra Magazine. Their mentor is Samar Halarnkar.
Dua Abbas Rizvi’s analysis of Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Vina Player, aimed at a young readership, is forthcoming in Risala Magazine, a literary magazine for children and young adults. Dua is one of fourteen artists being represented by The Parsonage Gallery in Maine. Her inaugural group show with the gallery opened to the public in July. Dua’s mentor is Fatima Bhutto.
Credits: Dua Abbas Rizvi. “Island”. Pastel on Archival Paper 44x48” , 2018
Sukhada Tatke’s longform feature ‘Man of Culture’ for fiftytwo.in made it to the Longreads and Browser reading lists. Sukhada also wrote a letter to her deceased father for Al Jazeera; An essay on Patrick Geddes for the Question of Cities; and contributed to Al Jazeera’s series of remembering those who were lost to Covid. Sukhada’s mentor is Tania James.
Parni Ray’s deep investigation into the Narendra Modi government’s plans to rebuild many of India’s most iconic sites was published in the October issue of Caravan magazine. Her mentor is Sonia Faleiro.
And now let’s end with some thoughts on the program from our wonderful fellows:
2022 fiction fellow Riddhi Dastidar says: “My South Asia Speaks fellowship has been the highlight and driving force of 2022. When Sonia's acceptance email arrived, telling me Deepa Anappara would be my mentor, it was literally a dream come true since I had been gutted at not being selected the previous year. Now I'm so thankful it came to me at the right time with the perfect mentor. Having Deepa's guidance, attention, and faith in my writing skill, and the company of my fellow fiction writers in the cohort, some of whom have become very good friends, is what has enabled me to stick to my resolve and make serious progress on the draft. Being able to workshop my stories and talk over my ideas with Deepa has increased the scope and ambition of my novel and I'm so excited to finish it this year. I will forever be grateful to SAS for taking a chance on me and providing me with my first taste of literary family.”
If SouthAsia Speaks is a literary family, the support system it creates is a big part of its fellowship. Maliha Khan writes “I can’t be grateful enough for being part of the South Asia Speaks Mentorship program. It has really helped me grow as an early career writer by being a part of a brilliant writing community. The Masterclasses have been instrumental for me to learn so much from established writers from around the world. The program has not only opened doors for me in the literary landscape but also given me lifelong friendships to cherish.”
As the SouthAsia Speaks family continues to grow, we thank everyone for reading and writing along with us. You can connect with us on Twitter and Instagram to see more of what we’re up to. Until next time.