Zubaan, Delhi : Newsletter for March 2007

It is with great pleasure that we announce the publication of 21Under 40 . It is an anthology of new writing by South Asian women edited by Anita Roy. It is the result of the Zubaan announcement in May 2006. We were flooded with submissions from around the world. It was a difficult decision at times to select the 21 stories. Contributors include Ruchika Chanana, Paromita Chakravarti, Roohi Choudhry, Tishani Doshi, Shahnaz Habib, Epsita Halder, Anjum Hasan, Meena Kandasamy, Mridula Koshi, Revati Laul, Madhulika Liddle, Anju Mary Paul , Swarnalatha Rangarajan, Adithi Rao, Diana Romany, Sumana Roy, Ashima Sood, Aishwarya Subramanyam, Nisha Susan, Narmada Thiranagama and Annie Zaidi.

The second title to be published this month is Gender, Citizenship and Development , edited by Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay and Navsharan Singh. It has been co-published with IDRC, Canada .

The second title to be published this month is Gender, Citizenship and Development , edited by Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay and Navsharan Singh. It has been co-published with IDRC, Canada.

We would also like to announce the launch of a portal on women’s writing. Womenswriting.com is the second generation of a website that Zubaan inherited from the British Council, India. We are hoping that the website will not only be a platform for interactions, but also a repository of information on women “who deal with words”. The core of this website will be the profiles, but there are plenty of other features in it as well. Since it is “Women’s Writing”, we want to make it international, rather than focused on a region. We are developing it in phases. We want to cover all countries and languages. The current selection and information on writers reflects the material we had handy – so please remind us (and send us your details) if we haven’t included you, or anyone you know of who could be accommodated on this website. Each profile should have the name (including a pseudonym if used), date/s, country, genre/s, language, biography, awards, reviews, publishers associated, official website and blog. This does not have to be only “famous” names!

For the moment, we need information for:
a) Profiles
b) An awards/writers residencies/grants list
c) All literary engagements (workshops, seminars, readings, book releases, book fairs, debates, book clubs, announcements etc.). These could be big, small and tiny – in schools/colleges, community centres, towns, cities and in any country.
d) If you would like to suggest a useful/related link for the site.

If there are gaps/corrections – in publications, bio, publisher affiliations – please tell us. We would appreciate constructive feedback: contact@zubaanbooks.com. This project would not have been possible without the help of Abhay Adhikari, Damini Butalia, Pooja Sharma, Shubha Patvardhan, Satish Sharma and Elsy.

Events : In early March, we had a celebration of the publication of 21 Under 40 at The Bookshop, Jorbagh, New Delhi. It was very well attended but as a result some of us were standing in the verandah, straining to hear the conversation between the six Delhi-based contributors of the anthology.