From my latest The Bookist column “What Is It, Dear Heart?”: I am at Yaddo writing a novel about the messiness of love. Yaddo is an artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. I have been here for a month. I write every day, I walk in the woods, and before I go to… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Writing
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 »
Upcoming Readings
Forthcoming readings from Lunch with a Bigot: Tsion Café, Harlem, New York, Thursday, May 7, 2015, 7 PM, in conversation with Akhil Sharma; Oblong Books, Rhinebeck, Friday, May 9, 2015, 7 PM; Community Bookstore, Brooklyn, Tuesday, May 12, 2015, 7 PM, in conversation with Dani Shapiro; Inquiring Minds Bookstore, New Paltz, Friday, May 15, 2015,… Read more »
Patna Roughcuts
I have just written a piece for Granta on a visit to my hometown. Ought one get a massage in Patna? How about a wedding? Or a funeral? These and other questions answered here. The day after the wedding, I flew out of Patna. When I returned to New York, I found copies of Granta… Read more »
Lunch With A Bigot
Today I was sent the full cover of the new book.
Granta
Granta 130 carries my essay, “Pyre,” a report on my mother’s death in Patna. A different version of this essay will appear in my forthcoming book, Lunch With a Bigot. This longer essay is titled “Missing Person.”
New Book
This book is forthcoming from Duke University Press, April 2015. Picador India will publish it in the summer of 2015. The cover-art is by Subodh Gupta: “Full Moon,” oil on canvas. My essays in the book, spanning fifteen years, are divided under four headings: Reading; Writing; Places; People. The book includes this brief piece: “Ten… Read more »
The PEN Ten Interview
Go here What is the responsibility of the writer? Our responsibility is only to be honest, even if it means being base or wrong. I fear it is fashionable for many writers to think that they have to be right. I want to be wrong but true. Our task is to be human. – Click… Read more »
On Akhil Sharma’s Art
My essay about Akhil Sharma’s writing, and his new novel Family Life, is now available on the Indian Quarterly website. Here’s an excerpt: I have read what I have written above and am struck immediately by the thought that Sharma himself would never approach his subject in the same way that I have. His writing… Read more »
Meeting the Minister
On the Indian Independence Day, a post went up about my meeting with Jitan Ram Manjhi, the Musahar Chief Minister of Bihar: Toward the end of May, I was driving on the Taconic highway and listening to a report from India on NPR. A reporter was at a bus-station in Gujarat, asking the youth selling… Read more »