It was while drying fresh chillies in the sun that Theertha Shivu thought of plotting an abduction. But it was past midnight by the time the 30-year-old homemaker from a village near Kushalnagar in Coorg got down to writing the next episode of her serialised serial killer story on Pratilipi, a digital storytelling platform.
First, she had to get all the house and farm work done, make sure the in-laws were asleep, the five goats and four dogs were fed before turning her attention to ‘Murder: A Police Love Story’ about a killer who preys on women with cat eyes but then falls in love with the police officer investigating his case.
The kicker is when the husband pooh-pooh's the wife's writing "until the money started rolling in". Writer's block? Muse on holiday? Dry some fresh chillies in the sun! Who knew it would be so effective?
The report goes on to profile several other such writers, who published on digital e-book platforms such as Pratilipi and Amazon India's Kindle Direct publishing. "Of Pratilipi's 9.5 lakh (950,000) writers in 12 languages, about 70% are women and almost all the top writers are housewives, followed by teachers, self-employed professionals and IT employees."
One could argue that the housewife author has already made waves long before this piece was written. I hate bringing up EL James, but ... well, many, many more like her have written books and stories that have their own audiences and fan bases on digital platforms, waiting for a journalist, blogger or TikToker to bring them under the spotlight. The next big thing might not be too far off.
Also making their mark are several South Asian novelists in this article on Homegrown, most of whom are women. The article seems to be making the case for a growing South Asian influence on the global literary scene, citing the inclusion of three South Asian writers in the 2022 Booker longlist.
Owing to a renewed surge in funding, forward looking publishers and mentorship programs, it seems like our homegrown authors are finally prodding at the Jenga tower of literary culture, causing it to wobble and upend the warped power dynamics of how the world perceives South Asian writing.
Will it? Regardless, more is better than less, in terms of volume and variety of reading material. South Asia has a long and huge literary tradition, and its contribution to world literary canon is more than welcome. The featured titles look interesting too.
While Americans are at odds over drag queens reading stories to children, in Mumbai, a drag artist cosplaying as a librarian hosted a children's tea part and read to them The Many Colours of Anshu, part of a growing canon of LGBTQ+ fiction coming out from India. The article is heartening because...
Instead of straightforward tales with a moral ending, these stories have gay couples, non-binary people, and transgender persons as their main characters. Many authors are also questioning the “elitist and Western” language of homosexuality like ‘coming out of the closet’, ‘queer’ and ‘pride’, which they argue has little resonance with a majority of Indians. And in doing so, they are gently nudging young minds while helping parents broach seemingly daunting topics.
While there are some commonalities, the LGBTQ+ experience is different from one country to another, and having local authors tackle and write about LGBTQ+ lives and issues in the local context is important in terms of representation, raising awareness and nurturing understanding.
And in this Q&A with Rahul Soni, associate publisher at HarperCollins India, translator, and co-founder of a bilingual literary journal, also called Pratilipi. It's Sanskrit for "you become what you read" and I'm guessing it strikes a chord with readers in the subcontinent. The interview is insightful and it's nice to hear from professionals in publishing, editing and translating from time to time.
Irish writer Megan Nolan decries the weaponisation of Goodreads' "hugely reductive ratings process" and noted its role in fostering "a number of sinister controversies in recent years." She also brings up another question: should one need to have written a book to criticise one?
When told I reviewed food but didn't cook it, a former colleague felt it was ... hypocritical? Not right, in essence. I've since fixed that to a degree, though I've long stopped reviewing food even before the pandemic lockdowns began and dining in was prohibited.
Does the same apply to books? Nolan doesn't seem to think so. Having been a books editor for about a decade and written over a hundred reviews, I think I'm qualified to be a book critic, despite occasional attacks of impostor syndrome.
Kate Knibbs at Wired manages to snag an e-mail interview with mysterious South Korean sci-fi legend Djuna (with the author's translator as the go-between) after reading the English edition of their newest book, Counterweight.
I have no idea how much artistic licence the translator took with the replies, but it's surprisingly interesting and provides a glimpse into the sci-fi writing scene in South Korea, also talking about films and manhwa.
And if you think going by pseudonyms is strange, Djuna reveals that "Last year, the nominees for the Korean Sci-Fi Awards’ webnovel category included CatG, ISteppedOnLego [SNRK], Hongbi, Neon Sign (Nehreuk), Shipstick, Yeonsanho, 2-ga 0, Songeum, Sanhocho, and Choongek. Only the winner, Yeon Sanho, had a normal-sounding Korean name." Very K-pop-esque.
A new Mississippi book-banning law may cut off minors' access to e-books or audiobooks through public libraries.
"Many libraries utilize resources like OverDrive and Hoopla to allow library cardholders instant access to a wide array of e-books and audiobooks," the report goes. "This means that libraries can’t offer these resources unless they can verify that all the content on these platforms complies with Mississippi’s bill or have a system in place to prevent minors from accessing content that isn’t in compliance with the bill."
Ultimately, a ban is less of a hassle than any attempt to monitor what minors read or categorise material according to age.
Elsewhere...
- In Afghanistan, Taliban rule is stifling the book industry, and Kabul-based journalist Hujjatullah Zia is concerned: "Overnight, Afghan book publishing has gone from being a flourishing sector ... to a struggling and risky business venture. Afghans have gone from being avid readers to not being able to afford books. I have gone from being a proud author and book owner to a despaired man who has tried and failed to hold on to an intellectual life in Afghanistan."
- Zimbabwean playwright, filmmaker and award-winning novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga speaks with New Zimbabwe about her new non-fiction book, AI, activism, the International Images Film Festival for Women, and more.
- A long-forgotten 1930s novel acclaimed by George Orwell and W.H. Auden will be republished after a Manchester bartender rediscovered it and solved the mystery about the author's last wishes, succeeding where academics failed. The bartender managed to get the book republished too. Never underestimate bartenders and the social networks around the local watering hole.
- Not long after a foundation linked to Hungarian president Viktor Orbán took over the country's largest bookstore chain and publisher, Libri, certain books sold by the chain are now being wrapped in plastic. To no one's surprise, these include books with LGBTQ+ characters, such as Micol Ostow’s Riverdale series and Alice Oseman’s graphic novel Heartstopper.
- Molly Templeton waxes lyrical over "books that no one else knows about". The term is used loosely because there is always the chance that someone else knows about "that book no one else knows about but me" – and if those people meet there will be lots to talk about, mostly about the book.
- Here's an argument against posthumous editing of books for today's sensibilities, which adds that the practice could lead to call to remove anything labelled "offensive" from existing books, like what the US book bans are trying to accomplish. At any rate, "We don’t need to update authors’ books to reflect contemporary values because our contemporary values are reflected by authors writing books right now."
- Authors Sarah Silverman, Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden have filed two lawsuits against OpenAI and Meta, the creators of AI language models ChatGPT and LLaMA, respectively. The lawsuits allege that the language models were trained on the authors' books without permission, pointing to summaries of the books produced by ChatGPT that I assume were so damn good, they could've only have come from "reading" the source material. This bunch joins authors Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay, who sued OpenAI for the same reason.
- It happens: you're reading books in a series and you eventually end up hating the whole bunch. Is there any reason to continue reading the series once the interest wanes? Over at Tor.com, James Davis Nicoll gives five reasons to finish a book (or a series) you don't love.
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