Keynote speech, Book reading, Q&A, and wine reception

On this TSAL opening night, Amitava Kumar will give a key note speech and read from his widely-acclaimed 2018 novel Immigrant Montana, which The New Yorker has put on its best of 2018 list. Kumar will also engage with the audience in a lively Q&A.

Moderator: Alka Kurian is Senior Lecturer at the University of Washington, Bothell, where she teaches postcolonial film and literature, gender studies, and human rights. Alka has published Narratives of Gendered Dissent in South Asian Cinemas (2012, 2014) and co-edited New Feminisms in South Asia (2017). She has a new novel manuscript titled A Bitter Inheritance.

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This panel will explore some of the major concerns faced by writers of color and the politics of the US publishing industry.

Panel members:

Amitava Kumar, Sharmila Sen, S J Sindu, Fatima Farheen Mizra, Pramila Venkateswaran

Moderator: Radhika Govindarajan is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she teaches human-animal relations, agrarian and environmental studies, religion, and South Asia. She is the author of Animal Intimacies (2018).

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This memorial commemorates the life and writing of Meena Alexander, one of the most significant South Asian American writers who passed away following a long illness on November 21, 2018

Speaker: Nalini Iyer is Professor of English at Seattle University where she teaches postcolonial literatures. She has co-edited/co-authored Other Tongues: Rethinking the Language Debates in India (2009); Roots and Reflections (2013); and Revisiting India’s Partition (2016). She was recently appointed Editor of South Asian Review.

In this session, the following authors will read from their latest writings and discuss some of the major concerns faced by them as women of color writers in the US.

• Pramila Venkateswaran (India/US): The Singer of Alleppey (2018)
• Fatima Farheen Mizra (US): A Place for Us (2018)
• Sharmila Sen (India/US): Not Quite White (2018)
• Alka Kurian (India/US): A Bitter Inheritance (novel-in-progress)
• Sonora Jha (India/US): The Wolf Who Cried Boy (novel-in-progress)

Moderator: Nalini Iyer is Professor of English at Seattle University where she teaches postcolonial literature. She has co-edited/co-authored Other Tongues: Rethinking the Language Debates in India (2009); Roots and Reflections (2013); and Revisiting India’s Partition (2016). She was recently appointed Editor of South Asian Review.

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In this panel, the following authors will read from their latest writings and discuss their major challenges as LGBTQ writers of color in the US and India:

• S J Sindu (Sri Lanka, US): Marriage of a Thousand Lies (2018)
• Mita Balani (India/US): Breaking Norms
• Sasha Duttchoudhury (India/US): Moving Truth(s): Queer and Transgender Desi Writings on Family (2015)

Moderator: Saad Adnan Khan is pursuing his PhD in Women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Washington. His research focus of interest and passion is queer politics and activism in Bangladesh. He completed his Master’s in Gender and intersectionality studies from Linkoping University, Sweden, and worked in Bangladesh in the areas of gender, sexuality, education and public health.

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Tasveer Youth Collective debuts in 2019. This event is an invitation to South Asian youth and teens, ages 11-17, to explore the significance of their names through fun writing exercises, small group sharing, discussion, and the possibility of presenting their stories at the subsequent Storywallahs event at 7:30pm.

Moderated by Ashraf Hasham, Executive Director of Vera Project.

Pizza and beverages will be provided to the participants.

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Join us for this free evening of storytelling where Seattle’s South Asian community shares personal stories, open mic style, related to the evening’s theme “What’s in Your name?” 

Tell us the story of your name, its origin, how it has contributed to your personality, and the sticky–and perhaps comical–situations it has brought about.

RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKET

Sign up to participate 

(Please note that performers will primarily be selected by lottery on the night of the event–signing up does not guarantee participation.)

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Learn how to craft a storyline, place your characters within the action, and create a framework for a complete novel. This class will also cover topics on tension and conflict within a story—how to create them and how to resolve them.

We will examine the plot structure of two novels, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundesaran.  Please try and read the novels beforehand—this will be useful, but it’s not a requirement.

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In this session the following Seattle-based poets will read from their latest works:

• Azura Tyabji [Seattle Youth Poet Laureate, and national ambassador for the National Youth Poet Laureate Competition]
• Ananya Garg
• Vik Bahl
• Shankar Narayan

Moderator: Shankar Narayan explores identity, power, mythology, and technology in a world where the body is flung across borders yet possesses unrivaled power to transcend them. Shankar is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, winner of the 2017 Flyway Sweet Corn Poetry Prize, and has been a fellow at Kundiman and at Hugo House.

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Join us for a book reading, Q&A, and workshop on film adaptation in the US

In this session, author Sohrab Homi Fracis will read from his novel Go Home (2018) and answer audience questions. He will also engage with filmmaker Allan Marcil to illustrate with readings how specific scenes in the novel Go Home were translated into screenplay/script form. They will provide an overview of basic screenplay design – the structure of the screenplay: Set Up; Confrontation; Resolution. They will explore how they took the essential elements of the source novel – character, conflict, premise, genre, setting – and constructed a cinematic story, a screenplay, which is, in the words of screenwriting guru Syd Field, “…a story told with pictures, in dialogue and description and placed within the context of dramatic structure.”

Moderator: Laila Kazmi is a Northwest Emmy Award-winning producer and filmmaker. Her stories have aired on PBS television stations in Seattle, San Diego, and streamed on PBS NewsHour. Her articles have been published on PBS NewsHour online, ColorLines, The Seattle Times, and Pakistan’s daily Dawn. She launched and produced the digital series ‘Borders & Heritage‘ and curated the independent film series ‘REEL NW‘ at KCTS 9 in Seattle.

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In this session, the following authors read from their novels and discuss themes of love, separation, racism, and violence in their recent novels.

• Shobha Rao (India, US): Girls Burn Brighter (2018)

Moderator: Darshana Shanbhag is a lifelong bibliophile and a devotee of the beauty of language. She has been a member of several book clubs and has been with her current fabulous book club for 13 years, avidly discussing works of fiction and nonfiction every month. When she isn’t reading, discussing books, or attending author talks, she practices Internal Medicine here in the Seattle area and has been doing so for more than 18 years. She is a strong supporter of women’s causes and looks forward to moderating this discussion on a book depicting misogyny and feminism in many parts of the world.

• Chaitali Sen (India, US): The Pathless Sky (2015)

Moderator: S. Charusheela is Professor at the University of Washington, Bothell, where she teaches gender, development, identity, and postcoloniality/globalization in South Asia.  She has served as editor of the journal Rethinking Marxism, as elected member of the Governing Board of the Cultural Studies Association, and elected member the Board of the International Association for Feminist Economics.

• A K Asif (Pakistan, US): Hell! No Saints in Paradise(2018)

Moderator: Shahina Piyarali is an American-Pakistani writer and reviewer for the Seattle-based publication Shelf Awareness. She is qualified as a barrister in England & Wales, and is an attorney who earned her Juris Doctorate at UW School of Law. Retired from the legal profession, Shahina still deploys her legal training to help non-profits. She is Board President of Tasveer and has served as a Board member of Group Health Foundation, University Preparatory Academy and Laurelhurst Community Club. 

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