by Mandira Pattnaik Tom Hermans When the New Delhi World Book Fair 2024 ceded space to participating countries to showcase tourism and heritage and promote higher education opportunities available, I felt a certain sadness. It was like the organizers (National Book Trust, Ministry of Education, Government of India) had accepted that books alone, and literature alone, would not attract crowds. Not only was such presence of ancillary purposes prominently advertised, but thought

by Mandira Pattnaik Florian Olivo Currently fascinated about Japanese culture after watching a series of travel videos, I have been reading up about food (onigiri, udon, yakitori) beyond the more popular sushi and tempura, places (Nara, Asakusa) beyond the usual Mt. Fuji and Shibuya, and about festivals like the Gion and Tenjin Matsuri beyond the Cherry Blossom and Snow Festivals. I laugh at myself for the depths that I go, and feel happy when I use bits from the info I have

by Mandira Pattnaik READ: If you haven’t heard it enough, here’s reiterating it one more time. READ. Publications that you’re fond of, publish what you love to read (plain logic). Send them what they’ll read with interest rather than pushing something which might be new to them, say a piece where you’ve experimented with form. From my experience, established places are unlikely to serve their readers with something that the readers are least expecting. Conversely, newer magaz

by Mandira Pattnaik Pauline Loroy Frankly, in a world so fragmented and opinionated (thanks to social media), it is difficult to say where writing ends and activism begins. I’m not an activist in the literal dictionary sense, but I’m fiercely protective of what I think is right and carefully scrutinize what I choose to believe in. Causes I’m invested in surely percolate into my writing, and readers might form opinions about my stands on various issues: Climate, for example, a

by Mandira Pattnaik Sydney Rae Turns out that the Indian news portal that reported certain probable names who may be awarded the Nobel Literature Prize for 2023, and my last column partially based on it, got it all wrong. “Reading the Norwegian writer and winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature Jon Fosse’s Scenes from a Childhood (2018) reminded me of Robert Walser and Franz Kafka. To be precise: Walser’s Berlin Stories (2006) and A Schoolboy’s Diary (2013), both origina

by Mandira Pattnaik Ben White As the author of a tiny chapbook of connected flash fiction stories which follows a couple through their early careers, marriage, difficult life changes, divorce and a longing for each other that threads their lifetime’s journey together, I am pleasantly surprised that one of the books that made the Booker Prize 2023 Shortlist is American Jonathan Escoffery’s collection of short stories If I Survive You. When the shortlist was announced a couple

by Mandira Pattnaik Eye for Ebony/Unsplash At 25, when her novel was still in progress, the writer typing away, briefly raising her head above the computer screen to gaze beyond the window, was confident. Titled White Teeth, the novel, which revolved around two wartime friends and about Britain’s relationship with immigrants from the Commonwealth countries, had already been named 100 best books of the 21st century a year before. Upon its publication in the year 2000, true to

by Mandira Pattnaik Mandira Pattnaik Recently, I went to an automobile workshop for the first time. I don’t drive and the family car and its upkeep and repair are my husband’s responsibility. I’ve never had any interest except for this time when I decided to accompany him. The waiting lounge was tastefully decorated with comfy sofas and a center table, newspapers and magazines, a wide TV beaming a popular Hindi comedy movie, a beverage vending machine, and a suggestion box. T

by Mandira Pattnaik Andre Sebastian Imagine you won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and, after all the brouhaha, you realize you don’t really want it. Imagine you were chosen for the International Booker, toasted in fancy ballrooms and filled-to-capacity auditoriums, and still have no writing room to call your own. These are the paradoxes of writing life — let’s face it — with all the glorious peaks, and dungeon-like abysses. I’m tempted to write a poem just about this! French

by Mandira Pattnaik Lucaxx Freire Writing life isn’t about existing in isolation. For example, I recently became a published book author, celebrating my book Where We Set Our Easel with a global audience, basking in the glory of excellent reviews. Side by side, sadly, I am still not immune to decline notices (that keep trickling into my inbox), and still getting hurt by the ‘nearly-there’ personal replies. I guess I will need to grow a thick skin as my fellow authors suggest,

by Mandira Pattnaik Malcom Lightbody In the final ninety seconds after being beheaded by her husband in 1838, Ta Chin thinks “…but I press my feet side by side and wiggle my toes this last time and whisper to them goodbye I know what is before me…” which finds representation in a book nearly 170 years later. Anne Boleyn, who met a similar fate at the behest of Henry VIII in 1536, and Medusa, after being subjected to similar violence by Perseus in 2000 BC, are some others whos

by Mandira Pattnaik Shiromani Kant Recently I faced two interviews. I say ‘faced’ because I dread them. I’m terribly shy and the same words that flow when I write are tied and bound when I am required to speak. It is only when I put on a garb of false confidence that I can talk in public. I’m told not speaking enough is like precipitating dark spots in one’s personality because people you meet, even your family, don’t know all that they should about you. It must be the truth

by Mandira Pattnaik Diego/Unsplash Writers are at a Summer Retreat. Another group is at a writing workshop where the main aim is to read and share drafts, and offer and receive honest feedback. At her home in Edinburgh, a mother with a toddler taking a nap scribbles a story that she thinks is a golden gift from heaven. A student tries his hand at writing a short-short between working on his doctoral thesis. If they all submit to a themed submission opportunity, whose work do

by Mandira Pattnaik Andrea De Santis Sometime last year, in his Google office, software engineer Blake Lemoine was having a conversation. He was simultaneously preparing a transcript, and at one point asked the one he was talking to, what was to be afraid of. To this, they engaged in a dialogue about rights and personhood. About 2000 miles away, a creative writing professor was grading essays, and his wife, an editor with a popular literary magazine, was reading submissions.

by Mandira Pattnaik Annie Spratt is a question. is a possibility. is a notion. is another period. Then another. But is never a full-stop. How does it end? How dare we end where we do? Who are we to do that in a story? And, if that story is a billion years old? Having brought complex characters to life, and setting the plot in motion, do we just snip it off? Do we say ‘Cut’ like a movie director, and say, okay, that’s that, readers! You’ll have that much and no more! Well, I’m

by Mandira Pattnaik The British Museum Janus: Roman god identified with doors, gates, and all beginnings and depicted with two opposite faces. Janus words: Words that are contronyms, antagonyms, or auto-antonyms. A word that is its own opposite — like fast, peruse, cleave, sanction. Like ‘fast,’ which can refer both to moving very quickly and to staying put. I write to you on New Years’ Eve. This is paradoxical, too, because what is New Year’s Eve in a country like ours, of s

by Mandira Pattnaik Birmingham Museums Trust Did you notice how #WritingCommunity (or #LitTwitter) resembled a High School farewell party for days last month? People tweeting what they loved about their ‘class’, how friends met and connected. Writers made twitter threads that closely resembled spiral-bound slam books — if you were there surely you wouldn’t have missed it. Nothing changed for me. I received no more nor less attention than previously — thirteen likes to the new

by Mandira Pattnaik Souvik Banerjee Suffice it to say that my last column on scribbled notes and trailing bogies of thoughts would remain incomplete, particularly in the current environ, without the mention of writers’ tweets, tweet length stories (#vss, #vss365, etc.) and tweet-based literary magazines (Cuento, Mythic Picnic). A tweet may be called the new-age, electronic version of random thoughts we often put on paper: A great idea, the seed of something that’ll become a s

by Mandira Pattnaik Felipe Furtado “The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin.” In my last column, I borrowed these lines from Arundhati Roy’s book. It felt nice to put them in the column, having written them in a

by Mandira Pattnaik munish sawant I trace my love for stories to a quiet childhood in a huge house, youngest member of an extended family, afternoons spent on a mango tree’s broad branch, and the embrace of a unique set of characters my mind bred to keep me company. Many years later, I believe that love got cemented with Arundhati Roy’s winning the Man Booker Prize for The God of Small Things (1997). As a student of economics at that time, Amartya Sen being conferred the Nob