Writers at Work
Writers at Work is Writing Studio’s flagship lecture series. It invites eminent writers, novelists, biographers, essayists, and nonfiction authors to discuss the art and craft of writing.
Aanchal Malhotra
Aanchal Malhotra (b.1990) is an oral historian and writer from New Delhi, India. She is the co-founder of the Museum of Material Memory, a crowd-sourced digital repository tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and antiques from the Indian subcontinent.
Malhotra has written extensively on the 1947 Partition and its related topics. Her first book, published in South Asia as Remnants of a Separation (2017) and internationally as Remnants of Partition (2019), won the Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award 2022, and was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, British Academy Book Prize, Hindu Lit for Life Non Fiction Prize, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize and the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. Her second book, In the Language of Remembering, tracing the long-term, cross-border, generational legacy of Partition, was published to critical acclaim in early 2022 and named one of History Today’s Best Books of the Year. Malhotra’s latest work is a debut novel titled The Book of Everlasting Things .
She is represented by David Godwin Associates.
Nev March
Nev March is the first Indian-born writer to win Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America’s Award for Best First Crime Fiction.
After a long career in business analysis, in 2015, Nev returned to her passion, writing fiction, and now teaches creative writing at Rutgers University, Osher Institute. A Parsee Zoroastrian herself, she lives in New Jersey with her husband and sons. Murder in Old Bombay is her debut novel.
Her books deal with issues of identity, race, and moral boundaries. Her sequel, Peril at the Exposition, is set during the 1893 World’s Fair, a time of conflict that planted the seeds of today’s red-blue political divide. The third volume in the series, Spanish Diplomat’s Secret, is set to release in September 2023.
Anil Menon
Kevin Missal
Kevin Missal is a national bestselling author and publisher. He is best known for his novels in the Kalki series, the Narsimha trilogy, and the Devi series. He is among India’s most celebrated and widely read authors in the genres of mythology and fantasy fiction.
Kevin was in conversation with the Writing Studio about his journey as an author and storyteller.
Saikat Majumdar
Saikat Majumdar is a novelist, academic and a popular commentator on arts, literature, and higher education. He is the author of four novels. He has also published a book of literary criticism, a general nonfiction book on higher education, and a co-edited collection of essays. His latest novel, The Middle Finger was published in January 2022 by Simon & Schuster. Saikat has taught at Stanford University, was named a Fellow at the Humanities Centre at Wellesley College, and is currently Professor of English & Creative Writing at Ashoka University. He writes regularly on higher education, arts and literature for Times Higher Education, The Hindu, and Outlook. He pens “Cheat Sheet”, a biweekly column on college, campus, and academic life on outlookindia.com. Prof Majumdar was in conversation with Ms Swati Joshi (PhD candidate, IITGN) about the craft of writing and his latest novel, The Middle Finger.
Vikram Chandra
Vikram Chandra is an international bestselling, award-winning novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and nonfiction author. He serves as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the blockbuster multiple-award-winning bestseller Sacred Games, which inspired Netflix India‘s first original International Emmy Awards nominated TV series of the same name. He is also the author of the novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain (winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Published Book), the short story collection Love and Longing in Bombay (winner of the Eurasia Region Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book) and the nonfiction book Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty (Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, USA). He has also co-written the screenplay of the award-winning film Mission Kashmir.
Mr. Chandra was in conversation with the Writing Studio to discuss his journey as a multi-faceted writer par excellence.
Chinmay Tumbe
For its inaugural session, the Writing Studio hosted Prof Chinmay Tumbe. He serves as Assistant Professor in the Economics Area at IIM Ahmedabad. He is the author of two bestselling books: India Moving: A History of Migration (Penguin Viking, 2018) and The Age of Pandemics (1817-1920): How they shaped India and the World (HarperCollins, 2020). Prof Tumbe was in conversation with the Writing Studio to talk about his journey as a bestselling author and academic.
