Writing South Asian: Reading and Discussion with Piyali Bhattacharya and Sheba Karim (Tues. 11/12 5-6pm)
Writing South Asian: Reading and Discussion with Piyali Bhattacharya and Sheba Karim
Tuesday, November 12, 5:00-6:00 PM
Commons Center Room 235/237
As part of South Asia week 2019, join us for a reading by Vanderbilt Writers in Residence Piyali Bhattacharya and Sheba Karim followed by a discussion about the connections between writing and identity, specifically South Asian identity.
In The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity, Kwame Anthony Appiah writes that identities “can all become forms of confinement” as much as they can “give contours to our freedom” and “connect the small scale of our lives alongside our kith and kin with larger movements, causes, and concerns” (218). We will talk with our authors about their own journey as writers, about the role that South Asian identity—in all its complexities—plays in how and what they write, and about the advice they have for aspiring authors.
Piyali Bhattacharya is a fiction writer, essayist, and editor of the anthology Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion, which received several national prizes, including being named an “Asian American Literary Achievement of 2016” by NBC. She is currently at work on her first novel.
Sheba Karim is the author of three novels: Skunk Girl, That Thing We Call a Heart, and Mariam Sharma Hits the Road. Her writing has been featured in 580 Split, Asia Literary Review, India Today, Literary Hub, Off Assignment, Shenandoah, South Asian Review, The Rumpus, Time Out Delhi and in several anthologies in the United States and India.