Posts Categorized: Media

Speaking Of

  It was an honor to deliver the 2018 Vassar College Convocation Address on September 12. A preview was offered here. I love in particular the beautiful and historic chapel on campus. Photos by Karl Rabe. In other news, the audio reading I did of Immigrant, Montana has received a wonderful review here: IMMIGRANT, MONTANA… Read more »

“This is the Author” Interview for the Audio Version

<Writer’s voice> I did the audio version of my novel. Here’s a brief, four-minute interview for Penguin Random House Audio about the experience. Who would be my dream narrator? (I chose writers, not actors.) Which word from my novel was I unable to pronounce? (It was an adjective, describing a woman’s smile.) What did the… Read more »

He’s Gotta Have It

In the pages of the latest New Yorker, Joanna Biggs has a lovely, absorbing review of Immigrant, Montana. The new book falls between genres. Its aim is not to tell a story, exactly, but to create a portrait of a mind moving uneasily between a new, chosen culture and the one left behind. Kailash’s journey… Read more »

Confessions of a Beef-Eater

I have a piece in this week’s The Nation a special issue on food. I’ll confess to the sin of beef eating in a moment. let me first confess to the sin of not having a true knowledge of science. In May of this year, Justice Mahesh Chandra Sharma of the Rajasthan High Court suggested… Read more »

Santosh Yadav Must Be Released #PressFreedom

The excellent Indian magazine, Caravan, has published a report I wrote on the repression of journalists in Bastar: “Yeh raat mein sapna dekh raha tha sarkar ke khilaaf,” Kamal Shukla, a veteran reporter said. I was travelling with him for a few days in Bastar, in December, and Shukla was describing the dire conditions journalists… Read more »

Meet Desh Deepak

Meet Desh Deepak. He is an ideal boy. But what kind of a reader is he? This line of inquiry started with my reading of the responses on Twitter to my piece in the Times of India. I wrote this piece and also others as a way of posing questions in the current, somewhat toxic,… Read more »

LA Review of Books

I’m pleased to share news about Lunch with a Bigot. It was included on a list of Ten Best Books of 2015 Published by an Academic Press. I’m particularly delighted by this excellent piece on the book in the Los Angeles Review of Books: AMITAVA KUMAR’S collection of essays Lunch with a Bigot: The Writer… Read more »

Radio

I saw the above sign at a reading I did at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck. This post is about recent events related to the release of my essay collection, Lunch with a Bigot, primarily links to my radio interviews: with Joe Donahue on WAMC; with Brian Lehrer on WNYC; with John Hockenberry at WNYC’s The… Read more »