Authors Electric

Just got back from Boston, from Sanskriti 2018. On June 23rd, the Calcutta Club Book Fair and Litfest held their fourth annual event . This year, the Guest of Honor was Shobhaa De.  She has been a familiar figure for decades to those in India and the diaspora, from glitzy magazines like Stardust and Celebrity or TV serials like Swabhimaan.  Labelled the "Jackie Collins" of India, she is best known for her bold depiction of sexy socialites and bollywood starlets in works of fiction, but she easily shrugs off the "Jackie Collins" label by saying that younger readers may not know Collins, but they do know De. And indeed, with her millions of twitter followers she vacillates between rather banal tweets fat-shaming policemen to fearless statements challenging the beef-ban in India and causing Hindutva fanatics to rampage at her door. The Sanskriti 2018 organizers, Chitro and Ruma Neogy, are exceptionally gracious hosts; I got to know them l...

First Impressions Like most writers, I have done my fair share of speaking at literary festivals. In 2017, for example, I went from the humongous Singapore Literary Festival (which had concurrent panels for three days and a dedicated Artist Liason Officer (ALO) to escort me to the correct venue), to the much smaller Neustadt Festival in Oklahoma with nine speakers. All literary festivals have something to offer the writer and the reader, but I personally enjoy the cozier festivals more. There is something about being thrown together in close proximity for a few days, usually in the same cozy hotel, that encourages a special kind of literary friendship to blossom. L to R: Polly, Amy, Peter, Sheena, Annabel, Dipika, Jenny, Louisa Gladstone's Hearth Festival in 2018, held from February 3-4 in Wales, was just such a festival. My fellow speakers were Annabel Abbs , Sheena Wilkinson and Jenny Lewis . Polly Atkin  was writer-in-residence in February. I learnt a lot f...

On most days I know how lucky I am to work with words everyday, and in doing so, meet some of the most creative minds of the world. On other days I think I should be coding alone in a basement so that I can be paid without ever making a public appearance again. Don’t get me wrong...I teach and write, so I am quite comfortable pontificating in front of large (captive) audiences. The problem starts when I am being recorded doing so. As I write about Asia, and Asian audiences are right at the forefront of embracing our digitally visual world, I am finding it hard to avoid YouTube. I can, of course, always decline being videotaped, but I find myself more and more on camera, whether it is my publicist wanting a YouTube video, or a radio station in Chicago telling me that folks are much more likely to click on a YouTube link than an audio podcast (and then taping a  Part I and Part 2 !)  So I found myself at Star Malaysia’s TV studio in Kuala Lumpur in May; not only ...