Posts Categorized: Writing

The Summer That Changed You

An Indian newspaper asked me to contribute a hundred words about a summer that was transformative. I wrote about the summer when I wrote the first draft of Immigrant, Montana. (The novel was published in India as The Lovers.) I was also asked to supply a photo from the time I was writing about. My… Read more »

The World Is Made Up Of Lines

My friend Vasundhara at Aleph Book Company in Delhi asked me to share my writing advice. It was pub day for my book Writing Badly Is Easy. When I got her note on my phone, I was at Mass MOCA in North Adams. My daughter took this picture. I have now written a few lines… Read more »

Prized Possession

For Canada’s Sharp Magazine, I wrote a little piece about my most prized possession: my mother’s prayer beads. My father opened my mother’s closet and laid out all its contents on the bed: beautiful silk saris, a couple of woollen coats, sweaters, small pieces of jewellery, a few gold coins. This was just hours after… Read more »

Consider the Monkey

  I wrote an original essay for Powells.com about Ota Benga and the ways in which monkeys became a part of my novel, Immigrant Montana. Click here.

Notebooks

Granta has carried an essay of mine on the notebooks I used during the writing of my novel, Immigrant, Montana. And also an excerpt.

Notebooks

  Over at Instagram, I’m engaged in a personal curatorial project: I’m looking at my old notebooks, some as much as twenty years old, and the clippings I have made about writers or about writing. I take a picture of the page and then erase what I think is less important. This is editorial work… Read more »

Love Poems

  I have a new piece for The New Yorker’s Page-Turner: I am trying now to remember when it was that I stopped thinking of myself as a new immigrant. Please read the entire piece here.

Faber cover

I’m very pleased to share the cover of my novel’s Faber edition. It captures some of the rowdy energy and violence of the narrative. Cover design by Alex Kirby.