#Indian literary agents

[thereadingbud]

Preparing Your Manuscript for Pitching to Indian Agents: A Guide for Indian and NRI Authors

In the competitive world of publishing, preparing your manuscript for pitching to literary agents is crucial. For Indian authors and Non-Resident Indian (NRI) authors looking to break into the Indian publishing market, understanding the nuances of this process can make all the difference. As a developmental Editor with over a decade of experience in the Indian publishing industry, I’ve seen…

[mariacallous]

If you were asked to guess which prestigious film-making duo had spent their career scratching around desperately for cash, trying to wriggle out of paying their cast and crew, ping-ponging between lovers, and having such blood-curdling bust-ups that their neighbours called the police, it might be some time before “Merchant Ivory” sprang to mind. But a new warts-and-all documentary about the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the US director James Ivory makes it clear that the simmering passions in their films, such as the EM Forster trilogy of A Room With a View, Maurice and Howards End, were nothing compared to the scalding, volatile ones behind the camera.

From their initial meeting in New York in 1961 to Merchant’s death during surgery in 2005, the pair were as inseparable as their brand name, with its absence of any hyphen or ampersand, might suggest. Their output was always more eclectic than they got credit for. They began with a clutch of insightful Indian-set dramas including Shakespeare-Wallah, their 1965 study of a troupe of travelling actors, featuring a young, pixieish Felicity Kendal. From there, they moved on to Savages, a satire on civilisation and primitivism, and The Wild Party, a skewering of 1920s Hollywood excess that pipped Damien Chazelle’s Babylon to the post by nearly half a century.

It was in the 1980s and early 1990s, though, that Merchant Ivory became box-office titans, cornering the market in plush dramas about repressed Brits in period dress. Those literary adaptations launched the careers of Hugh Grant, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves and Julian Sands, and helped make stars of Emma Thompson and Daniel Day-Lewis. Most were scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who had been with them, on and off, since their 1963 debut The Householder; she even lived in the same apartment building in midtown New York. Many were scored by Richard Robbins, who was romantically involved with Merchant while also holding a candle for Bonham Carter. These films restored the costume drama to the position it had occupied during David Lean’s heyday. The roaring trade in Jane Austen adaptations might never have happened without them. You could even blame Merchant Ivory for Bridgerton.

Though the pictures were uniformly pretty, making them was often ugly. Money was always scarce. Asked where he would find the cash for the next movie, Merchant replied: “Wherever it is now.” After Jenny Beavan and John Bright won an Academy Award for the costumes in A Room With a View, he said:“I got you your Oscar. Why do I need to pay you?” As Ivory was painstakingly composing each shot, Merchant’s familiar, booming battle cry would ring out: “Shoot, Jim, shoot!”

Heat and Dust, starring Julie Christie, was especially fraught. Only 30 or 40% of the budget was in place by the time the cameras started rolling in India in 1982; Merchant would rise at dawn to steal the telegrams from the actors’ hotels so they didn’t know their agents were urging them to down tools. Interviewees in the documentary concede that the producer was a “conman” with a “bazaar mentality”. But he was also an incorrigible charmer who dispensed flattery by the bucketload, threw lavish picnics, and wangled entrées to magnificent temples and palaces. “You never went to bed without dreaming of ways to kill him,” says one friend, the journalist Anna Kythreotis. “But you couldn’t not love him.”

Stephen Soucy, who directed the documentary, doesn’t soft-pedal how wretched those sets could be. “Every film was a struggle,” he tells me. “People were not having a good time. Thompson had a huge fight with Ismail on Howards End because she’d been working for 13 days in a row, and he tried to cancel her weekend off. Gwyneth Paltrow hated every minute of making Jefferson in Paris. Hated it! Laura Linney was miserable on The City of Your Final Destination because the whole thing was a shitshow. But you watch the films and you see no sense of that.”

Soucy’s movie features archive TV clips of the duo bickering even in the midst of promoting a film. “Oh, they were authentic all right,” he says. “They clashed a lot.”The authenticity extended to their sexuality. The subject was not discussed publicly until after Ivory won an Oscar for writing Call Me By Your Name: “You have to remember that Ismail was an Indian citizen living in Bombay, with a deeply conservative Muslim family,” Ivory told me in 2018. But the pair were open to those who knew them. “I never had a sense of guilt,” Ivory says, pointing out that the crew on The Householder referred to him and Merchant as “Jack and Jill”.

Soucy had already begun filming his documentary when Ivory published a frank, fragmentary memoir, Solid Ivory, which dwells in phallocentric detail on his lovers before and during his relationship with Merchant, including the novelist Bruce Chatwin. It was that book which emboldened Soucy to ask questions on screen – including about “the crazy, complicated triangle of Jim, Ismail and Dick [Robbins]” – that he might not otherwise have broached.

The documentary is most valuable, though, in making a case for Ivory as an underrated advocate for gay representation. The Remains of the Day, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker-winning novel about a repressed butler, may be the duo’s masterpiece, but it was their gay love story Maurice that was their riskiest undertaking. Set in the early 20th century, its release in 1987 could scarcely have been timelier: it was the height of the Aids crisis, and only a few months before the Conservative government’s homophobic Section 28 became law.

“Ismail wasn’t as driven as Jim to make Maurice,” explains Soucy. “And Ruth was too busy to write it. But Jim’s dogged determination won the day. They’d had this global blockbuster with A Room With a View, and he knew it could be now or never. People would pull aside Paul Bradley, the associate producer, and say: ‘Why are they doing Maurice when they could be making anything?’ I give Jim so much credit for having the vision and tenacity to make sure the film got made.”

Merchant Ivory don’t usually figure in surveys of queer cinema, though they are part of its ecosystem, and not only because of Maurice. Ron Peck, who made the gay classic Nighthawks, was a crew member on The Bostonians. Andrew Haigh, director of All of Us Strangers, landed his first industry job as a poorly paid assistant in Merchant’s Soho office in the late 1990s; in Haigh’s 2011 breakthrough film Weekend, one character admits to freeze-framing the naked swimming scene in A Room With a View to enjoy “Rupert Graves’s juddering cock”. Merchant even offered a role in Savages to Holly Woodlawn, the transgender star of Andy Warhol’s Trash, only for her to decline because the fee was so low.

The position of Merchant Ivory at the pinnacle of British cinema couldn’t last for ever. Following the success of The Remains of the Day, which was nominated for eight Oscars, the brand faltered and fizzled. Their films had already been dismissed by the director Alan Parker as representing “the Laura Ashley school” of cinema. Gary Sinyor spoofed their oeuvre in the splendid pastiche Stiff Upper Lips (originally titled Period!), while Eric Idle was plotting his own send-up called The Remains of the Piano. The culture had moved on.

There was still an appetite for upper-middle-class British repression, but only if it was funny: Richard Curtis drew on some of Merchant Ivory’s repertory company of actors (Grant, Thompson, Simon Callow) for a run of hits beginning with Four Weddings and a Funeral, which took the poshos out of period dress and plonked them into romcoms.

The team itself was splintering. Merchant had begun directing his own projects. When he and Ivory did collaborate, the results were often unwieldy, lacking the stabilising literary foundation of their best work. “Films like Jefferson in Paris and Surviving Picasso didn’t come from these character-driven novels like Forster, James or Ishiguro,” notes Soucy. “Jefferson and Picasso were not figures that audiences warmed to.” Four years after Merchant’s death, Ivory’s solo project The City of Your Final Destination became mired in lawsuits, including one from Anthony Hopkins for unpaid earnings.

Soucy’s film, though, is a reminder of their glory days. It may also stoke interest in the movies among young queer audiences whose only connection to Ivory, now 95, is through Call Me By Your Name. “People walk up to Jim in the street to shake his hand and thank him for Maurice,” says Soucy. “But I also wanted to include the more dysfunctional side of how they were made. Hopefully it will be inspiring to young film-makers to see that great work can come out of chaos.”

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"In the hands of some of its most able practitioners, postcolonial scholarship is a potent means of exploring the reworking ("provincializing") of European thought at and for the margins of empire (Chakrabarty 2000, 16). However, most postcolonial scholarship is written out of British or American universities and emanates from the heart of a recently superceded empire or of a recently ascendant one that hesitates to acknowledge its own imperial background. American postcolonial scholarship is not preoccupied with America (Hulme 1995; Thomas 1994172-73). In the background of such scholarship are European theorists, particularly Foucault, Derrida, and Gramsci; in the foreground, European colonial thought and culture. In these circumstances, as many have pointed out, it tends to be Eurocentric - or as the Australian anthropologist Patrick Wolfe puts it, occidocentric (1999,1). So positioned, it is well placed to comment on the imperial mind in its large diversity, and even - especially in the hands of scholars like Homi Bhabha and Dipesh Chakrabarty who grew up in former colonies - on the ways in which European thought has been inflected and hybridized by its colonial encounters, but not on the diverse, on-the-ground workings of colonialism in colonized spaces around the world. A central claim of the distinguished Indian subaltern historian, Ranajit Guha, is that if British historical writing on the subcontinent reveals something of Britain and the Raj, it reveals nothing of India (1997). Somewhat similar criticisms have been made of much of the postcolonial literature: that it (or parts of it) anticipates a radically restructured European historiography, that it allows for nothing outside the (European) discourse of colonialism, that it is yet another exercise in metatheory and in European universalism (e.g., Slemon 1994; McClintock 1994). As the literary theorist Benita Parry puts it, the postcolonial emphasis on language and texts tends to offer "the World according to the Word" (1997, 12)-and the word tends to be European. But unless it can be shown that colonialism is entirely constituted by European colonial culture (a proposition for which it is hard to imagine any convincing evidence unless the concept of culture is understood so broadly that it loses any analytical value), then studies of colonial discourse, written from the center, must be a very partial window on the workings of colonialism.

...

But if the aim is to understand colonialism rather than the workings of the imperial mind, then it would seem essential to investigate the sites where colonialism was actually practiced. Its effects were displayed there. The strategies and tactics on which it relied were actualized there. There, in the detail of colonial dispossessions and repossessions, the relative weight of different agents of colonial power may begin to be assessed. If colonialism is the object of investigation, then the sparse Canadian Shield is promising terrain. It was not detached from London, of course, and may have been profoundly influenced by elements of imperial thought and culture, but the extent of this influence cannot be ascertained in London. Rather, I think, one needs to study the colonial site itself, assess the displacements that took place there, and seek to account for them. To do so is to position studies of colonialism in the actuality and materiality of colonial experience. As that experience comes into focus, its principal causes are to be assessed, among which may well be something like the culture of imperialism. To proceed the other way around is to impose a form of intellectual imperialism on the study of colonialism, a tendency to which the postcolonial literature inclines.

The experienced materiality of colonialism is grounded, as many have noted, in dispossessions and repossessions of land. Even Edward Said (for all his emphasis on literary texts) described the essence of colonialism this way:

Underlying social space are territories, land, geographical domains, the actual geographical underpinnings of the imperial, and also the cultural contest. To think about distant places, to colonize them, to populate or depopulate them: all of this occurs on, about, or because of land. The actual geographical possession of land is what empire in the final analysis is all about (1994, 78).

Frantz Fanon held that colonialism created a world "divided into compartments," a "narrow world strewn with prohibitions," a "world without spaciousness." He maintained that a close examination of "this system of compartments" would "reveal the lines of force it implies." Moreover, "this approach to the colonial world, its ordering and its geographical layout will allow us to mark out the lines on which a decolonized society will be reorganized" (1963, 37-40).

Along the edge of empire that was early-modern British Columbia, colonialism's "geographical layout" was primarily expressed in a reserve (reservation) system that allocated a small portion of the land to native people and opened the rest for development. Native people were in the way, their land was coveted, and settlers took it. The line between the reserves and the rest-between the land set aside for the people who had lived there from time immemorial and land made available in.various tenures to immigrants became the primary line on the map of British Columbia. Eventually, there were approximately 1,500 small reserves, slightly more than a third of 1 percent of the land of the province. Native people had been placed in compartments by an aggressive settler society that, like others of its kind, was far more interested in native land than in the surplus value of native labor (Wolfe 1999, 1-3)."

- Cole Harris, "How Did Colonialism Dispossess? Comments from an Edge of Empire," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), p. 166-167.

[walkawaytall]

For the top 3 ask game - any of these? Throwing out a bunch in case of duplicates:

33, 45, 54, and/or 57?

You're the only one to send an ask so far, so I'll tackle them all!

33. Top 3 things you’d buy if you gained three million dollars

Okay, this is selfish and I don't know if it counts as buying something, but I would have just every medical test done. Like, I occasionally fantasize about being able to just...I don't know, be put in a coma for like a week or something while every specialist that exists runs every test that makes sense to run so they can figure out what the hell is wrong with my body. I understand that what I'm describing is basically a medical version of the plot of Severance, and that's super messed up, but also, I am tired of medical testing and I want answers.

Also, one of my besties has a whole gaggle of kids and a very small house and they need more space, so if I could just give them a house or something? That'd be rad.

And...paying for a literary agent? I'm still playing very loosey-goosey here with the definition of "buy", but since I would love to just write for a living and having three million dollars at my disposal would mean I could maybe just do that without worrying about traditional work, hiring an agent for the novels I haven't quite finished would be cool.

45. Top 3 things you hope to accomplish in college

Literally just graduate at this point. I don't care about my GPA. I don't care about making connections with anyone. It's an online school, I'm 36, and I'm majoring in the job I've had for half a decade. I want to graduate so I can go, "More money, please!" and get paid a higher rate than I currently am doing the exact same work all because I now have a piece of paper saying I'm good at school.

I have a very cynical view of the level of importance our society places on higher education for careers that do not require it can you tell.

54. Top 3 types of foreign food

I'm...kind of going broad here and just listing varieties, not specific dishes?

Thai

Indian (I know India is huge and I could get into regions, I guess, but I've never had an Indian dish -- whether it was while I was in Chennai or stateside -- that I haven't liked)

Mexican (like...Mexican...not so much Tex-Mex. It has its place, but...Mexican)

57. Top 3 cheesy romance movies

The Holiday

The Princess Bride

To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Top 3!

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Today in Christian History

Today is Thursday, February 22nd, 2024. It is the 53rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; Because it is a leap year, 313 days remain until the end of the year.

1072: (or the 23rd) Death of Peter Damian, in Faenza, Italy. A reforming monk of the Benedictine order, he will be remembered chiefly for De divina omnipotentia which questioned the limits of the omnipotence of God (e.g.: can God change the past?) and will be declared a doctor of the church in the nineteenth century.

1225: Hugh of St. Cher dons the habit of the Dominican order. He will become a notable Bible scholar and head a team that will create the first really useful Bible concordance.

1297: Death in Cortona, Italy, of St. Margaret of Cortona, a Franciscan tertiary, who had established a hospital for the poor.

1632: Zuni Indians (tribe pictured above) kill Francisco de Letrado and dance with his scalp on a pole. He had been among Spanish missionaries attempting to impose a Christian regime on the Pueblo Indians.

1649: The Westminster Assembly adjourns, having held one thousand one hundred and sixty three sessions over a period of five years, six months, and twenty-two days. They were known for their solemn fasts and long hours of prayer.

1703: General Codrington bequeaths two plantations in Barbados for medical mission work to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, on condition that professors and scholars be maintained there to study and practice medicine, surgery, and divinity in order to “endear themselves to the people and have the better opportunities of doing good to men’s souls whilst they are taking care of their bodies.”

1822: Samuel and Catherine Clewes Leigh sail into a New Zealand Bay to begin work among the Maori. Samuel’s Ill health will force them to leave the following year, but the mission will continue under other workers.

1845: Death in London of Rev. Sydney Smith, wit and literary critic, author of The Letters of Peter Plymley. He had once tied some antlers to donkeys to pretend they were deer when an aristocratic lady was visiting. His daughter wrote, “My father died in peace with himself and with all the world; anxious to the last to promote the comfort and happiness of others. He sent messages of kindness and forgiveness to the few he thought had injured him. Almost his last act was bestowing a small living of £120 per annum on a poor, worthy, and friendless clergyman, who had lived a long life of struggle with poverty on £40 per annum.”

1870: Missionary James Gilmour sails from Liverpool to work in China and Mongolia. Made chaplain of the ship on which he is sailing, he shares the gospel with every member of the crew during the night watches.

1892: W. T. Satthianadhan, a leader of the Church Mission Society in Madras, relapses into a serious medical condition and will die within days. He had been a representative to Anglican councils in England, author of books in Tamil and English, an educator at Madras University, vice-president of the Tamil Central Church Council, and founder of benevolent associations.

1901: Charles and Lettie Cowman arrive in Japan where they will become co-founders of the Oriental Mission Society.

1911: Death in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of Frances E. W. Harper, an African-American woman who had labored in the anti-slavery cause alongside workers such as Julia Ward Howe and Frederick Douglas. She had published a volume of poems when twenty-one years of age.

1930: Soviet agents arrest more than sixty Orthodox clergy and laity in Tomsk for “counter-revolutionary agitation” and “grouping of church people.” They will execute fifty of these individuals.

1954: The first “Voice of Tangier” program airs over a 2,500-watt transmitter. Programming is broadcast in Spanish and English. Within two years, the station will be broadcasting in more than twenty languages.

[thenewwei]

11 years ago today, my first novel The Brotherhood was published. 5 years ago today, the second edition of The Brotherhood was published.

The Brotherhood remains my most popular book. I've been talking with some people in TV about making it into a limited TV series. If so, it would be as groundbreaking, if not more so, than the book: the first mystery/drama TV series with mostly Indian-American characters set in the USA, that I can think of.

Because of that, the project still remains an up-hill battle. Almost all American TV series with People of Color are comedies, and despite what they claim, very few industry insiders are interested in financing and screening content that's genuinely original and challenging. I'm looking to connect with more people in the TV/film industry, particularly of South Asian descent, who can make this happen: content acquirers, writers, directors, producers, actors, actresses, agents etc. If you know anyone who can help, please send them my way.

It's been 4 years since the publication of The Run and Hide, the second volume of The Brotherhood Chronicle. Despite getting the least acclaim and having won no awards, this remains my personal favorite book, and a darling for Desai diehards.

The Dance Towards Death was published 3 years ago, and it's won 13 literary honors in that time, my most acclaimed book so far.

In about a month, it will be the 10th anniversary of Good Americans, my most provocative book and a subject of divided opinion. Its anthology sequel, Bad Americans, is my longest and most ambitious book to date, a novel and short story collection in one. I'm working hard on it, and the polished manuscript should be ready to send out to agents etc. around January 2024.

I've stayed the course and maintained my literary independence for more than a decade. Let's see if I can do that and still convince a major publisher to bring Bad Americans out into the literary sphere and get it the wide acclamation and readership I believe it deserves.

The New Wei Literary Movement and its associated Salons are gaining traction. I've met many writers, artists, musicians, actors and filmmakers over the last six months and I hope we've inspired them to produce new dynamic projects.

I'm also working to interview provocative artists of many mediums and produce articles on them. Ultimately I plan to write a book on the wider literary/artistic scene, our tumultuous decade and The New Wei.

Then there are my travels: recently to Germany/Austria/Italy, across the USA and soon to Greece and Turkey too. I know a lot of people have been screaming for me to write a non-fiction book about all these crazy adventures, and that might finally happen.

In addition, there's plenty afoot at the library too: our annual Southeast Queens Author Festival at Cambria Heights Library on 9/30 at 1:30pm, dynamic planned panels for ALA in Baltimore and San Diego, a renovated Teen Center, new art installations, and plenty more.

Things have been busy in the best possible way, and I'm grateful for it.

[dankusner]

GARRISON: Me in WaPo

Recently, Dallas journalist Daniel Kusner posted on YouTube a video unearthed from state archives. It shows two White men performing in blackface at a 1962 in-house talent show for the public safety department.

Colonel Homer Garrison, head of the Texas Department of Public Safety from 1938 1968, was an ardent promoter of the Rangers and their image.

406 | CULT OF GLORY 

were the towering Indians-man-eaters it was claimed who had so alarmed Stephen F. Austin on his first visit to Texas, and whose fight for survival brought forth the very first Rangers. 

The truck flew over the river, the same murky stream where the Native Americans had paddled their dugout canoes. 

For a few miles the trees, water, and sky dominated the view - not too different from what the Rangers of 1823 might have seen. 

Then the vista yielded to the ragged edges of a small town: a farm and ranch store, Family Dollar, Chicken Express. Bess stopped his truck at a red light. 

He pulled the brim of his hat low. It was a small gesture that seemed to span the centuries.

The Karankawas are extinct, but murderers, meth dealers, and tombstone scammers are still out there.

"The best part of the job," he said, "is you're working every day as a part of history.” 

THE MELON HARVEST 

363 

In 1947, Governor Beauford Jester deployed the Rangers to the Gulf Coast during an oil workers' strike. 

The workers' union claimed in a lawsuit that the Rangers-acting as "strike breakers and goons" —harassed and beat picketers. 

In 1957, a bitter and violent strike lasted for more than forty days at the Lone Star Steel Company in the East Texas town of Daingerfield. 

At least a dozen Rangers were sent, and again they said they were not taking sides. 

But Lone Star Steel was secretly picking up the tab for many of the Rangers' expenses, according to former senior captain Clint Peoples. 

Lone Star paid "for a goodly number of the meals of the Rangers," he said, and may have paid for their motel rooms. 

In exchange, the Rangers were "more or less guarding the plant, Lone Star Steel, against the people that worked there," Peoples said long after he had left the force. 

"What you're doing there, instead of enforcing the law, you are accommodating management.” 

The Starr County strike brought an additional component-race. 

Among the workers, the Rangers' reputation on the border was forged in the troubles of the early 1900s. 

Tales of Ranger transgressions against Mexicans and Mexican

Aynesworth two prime actors in the Lucas saga, spent hours walking me through the are nah that ca Tim also grateful to friends and colleagues who provided valuable counsel. 

They include Sam Gwynne, Scott Parks, Jeff Guinn, Carlton Stowers, and the late, great Bob Compton. 

As he has done before, George Getschow-a man wiho survived both the toxins of academia and the venom of a copperhead snake-went above and beyond the norms of friendship. 

George's considerable wisdom and keen editing eye rescued me many times. 

I can't thank him enough. 

David Patterson at Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency has been a steadfast champion and adviser for years now, and was doubly so with this book. 

Every writer should have an agent like David. At Viking, executive editor Paul Slovak took over this project at midstream with a steady, calming hand. 

I'm deeply appreciative of his astute guidance and expansive vision.

[ippnoida]

Jaipur BookMark puts spotlight on future of publishing

New technological advancements impacting publishing such as artificial intelligence (AI), podcasts, data analysis, and OTT were the focal points of discussion at the 11th edition of the Jaipur BookMark, held alongside the Jaipur Literature Festival from 1 – 5 February 2024 in Jaipur.

According to director, JBM Manisha Chaudhry, this year's Jaipur BookMark (JBM) looked at the future of the publishing industry and all important developments likely to impact publishing in the future. Sessions were also held alongside to mark the anniversaries of major publishing houses along with a Roundtable with 18 publishers from across the globe.

Chaudhry referred to a session on AI and the future of publishing that had Meru Gokhale, founder of Editrix.ai and former publisher at the Penguin Press Group; Charles Collier, a film, television and literary agent, producer, lawyer, and talent manager; and Safir Anand, intellectual property lawyer and brand strategist in conversation with Marcus du Sautoy, , Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. The session talked about the future of the publishing industry with AI entering the domains of editing, translation and audiobooks, how it will impact legal contracts in publishing, and who would be the owner of the intellectual property rights of books published with AI's help. All these concerns notwithstanding, there was some optimism about the potential of this technology.

Another session on podcasts and books included speakers Amrita Tripathi, founder-editor of The Health Collective, a resource on mental health and storytelling, Richard Osman, London-based author of The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice, and The Bullet That Missed; and William Dalrymple, historian, author and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival and moderated by Hemali Sodhi, founder of A Suitable Agency. The session explored the deep connections between podcasts and books, which is based on the coming together of voice and text. It explored the synergy between book podcasts and books and the publishing industry – how a high-quality podcast can connect listeners with an intimacy about the book, Chaudhry said. The session examined how publishing podcasts encourages listeners to read more books and help increase book sales.

A session on data analysis had panelists Vikrant Mathur of The Nielsen Report and Rick Simonson from Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company in conversation with Hemali Sodhi. The session delved into the significance of data in the publishing industry in India, which is needed for a developing industry. The session focused on the Nielsen Report, which provides insights into the size of the Indian publishing market, along with recent trends and factors that are set to drive book publishing market growth in the upcoming years. The panelists advocated the collection of more data across the book publishing industry in India to project better results through data analysis.

Chaudhry talked about another 'crackling' session on the symbiotic relationship between OTT and publishing. Sahira Nair, content creator for Amazon Prime; Anish Chandy, founder – Labyrinth Literary Agency; Radhika Gopal, head – writers and directors, Tulsea; and Anand Neelakantan, author of the Bahubali trilogy, Asura: Tale of the Vanquished, Valmiki's Women, Vanara, Nala Damayanti, The Tale of the Flying Mountains, The Very, Extremely, and Most Naughty Asura Tales For Kids took part. The session was moderated by Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO – HarperCollins India. The panel took an outside-in view of book publishing from the eyes of leaders in the OTT space from speakers Neelkanthan, Gopal, Chandy and Nair, who are into writing and direction, OTT rights for book adaptations and content creation for OTT, respectively. The session talked about OTT's hunger for content, the sales of rights of books and contracts for content adaptations along with the steps that publishers can take to leverage old and new content for the OTT industry, she said.

Literary milestones for book publishers

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Another publishing house to celebrate a literary milestone was Seagull Books, Chaudhry said, with the Kolkata-based publishing house completing its 40 years in 2023. Seagull Books' Naveen Kishore shared insights about the publishing house creating books across borders and boundaries in a conversation with Sanjoy Roy, managing director of Teamwork Arts.

The Jaipur BookMark 2024 celebrated 40 years of feminist publishing in India, Chaudhry said, with feminist publishers Ritu Menon and Urvashi Butalia sharing insights on how Indian feminist publishing was associated with the women's movement in the country, making it a huge hit with the target population. When Butalia and Menon initially started with Kali for Women, there was debate over who was going to read these books in a country like India, Chaudhry recounted. But gradually, women's studies emerged as a sought-after discipline in activism as well as publishing. This marked the way for the establishment of a new kind of list, including feminist accounts, women writers and experiences of women at the grassroots level, which mainstream publishing houses would not think as viable products, she said. The session was interesting for women who have just entered the publishing industry in various roles.

Translations and multilingual publishing

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Another session on translations, Indian Literature: Across Languages, Across Scripts had Suchitra Ramachandran, writer and Tamil translator; Daisy Rockwell, Booker prize-winning translator of Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand; Sukrita Paul Kumar, poet and translator; and Mini Krishnan discussed and debated on the intricacies of translation. India has numerous languages and scripts and it takes great effort to translate the literary works from Indian languages into English. The session talked about the different aspects of translation, Chaudhry said, adding that each person's experience with translations is unique and they view it from their lens.

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In another session, Parminder Singh Shonkey, from Punjabi publishing house Rethink Foundation; Gita Ramaswamy, co-founder of the Telugu publishing house Hyderabad Book Trust; Ravi DeeCee; Kannan Sundaram from Kalachuvadu Publications; Shailesh Bharatwasi from Hindi publishing house Hind Yugm Publishers; and Esha Chatterjee, CEO of Bee Books and managing director of Patra Bharti, the third-largest Bengali publishing house discussed the landscape of Indian language publishing with Mita Kapur, founder and CEO of Jaipur-based literary agency Siyahi. The Telugu, Malayalam, Bangla, Tamil, Hindi and Punjabi publishers talked about the literary works that were gaining greater traction in their languages and discussed their lists, Chaudhry shared.

Educational Publishing on the path to growth

Chaudhry talked about the growth of educational publishing in India. The session on educational publishing had Atiya Zaidi, publisher at Ratna Sagar, discuss the importance of supplementary reading and the effect of the National Education Policy on academic publishing with Ananth Padmanabhan. The educational publishing sector, the session discussed, is the most profitable segment of publishing in India with a large population of school-going kids. The session talked about Collins – the educational publishing imprint of HarperCollins, and explored the common areas of interest between educational and trade publishing in India.

Another session had Neeraj Jain, managing director at Scholastic India; Nancy Silberkleit, one of the founders of Archie Comics Publications; and Prashant Pathak, director – publishing operations at Prakash Books and publisher at Wonder House Books discuss the relevance of picture books, which is one of the most important categories in Children's publishing as it is the starting point which develops an interest in books in young readers. The session was moderated by Kanishka Gupta, founder of literary agency Writer's Side. Silberkleit talked about the impact of graphic and illustrated comic books on children and how Archie Comics has created a place for itself in India over the years. Jain stressed on how picture books had been a gap area in Indian publishing and how Scholastic has helped bridge that gap, Chaudhry shared.

Another 'impactful' session Chaudhry talked about was the one between bestselling Tamil author Perumal Murugan, who has won several awards, including the JCB Prize for Literature 2023, and Swami Anandatheerthan Award, and his publisher Kannan Sundaram from Kalachuvadu Publications. The two have had a long-lasting relationship in publishing of over 20 years. The session was moderated by Kannada author Vivek Shanbhag, who brought out the little details and personal touches of this literary relationship and how it benefited both the publisher and the author, Chaudhry shared, adding Sundaram has made a mark in successfully presenting and marketing Murugan's work in the best possible manner.

In another session, Beauty and the Book, Sunandini Banerjee, senior editor and graphic designer at Seagull Books; Ahlawat Gunjan, creative head at Penguin Random House India; Philip Watson, from James & Hudson; Svein Størksen, Norwegian designer, illustrator, owner and editor of Magikon publishing; and Priya Kapoor, publisher at Roli Books talked about the allure of illustrated and design books. The session talked about how the book as an object of enduring beauty takes shape under the eye of designers and the creative process that makes the cover designs of books a sight to behold.

The Jaipur BookMark concluded with the Festival Directors' Roundtable on the last day in which lists and rights of 18 national and international publishers were discussed. “The Jaipur BookMark still focuses a lot on its core strength which is rights. This time we had a catalogue for rights, which had 50 books from 12 publishers representing five languages. Whether it was the generalist, or the specialist, JBM 2024 had something of interest for everyone,” Chaudhry concluded.

[kashicloud]

[ad_1] Lynne Reid Banks, a versatile British author who began her writing career with the best-selling feminist novel “The L-Shaped Room” but found her biggest success with the popular children’s book “The Indian in the Cupboard,” died on Thursday in Surrey, England. She was 94.Her death, at a care facility, was caused by cancer, said James Wills, her literary agent.Ms. Banks was part of a generation of writers, including Shelagh Delaney and Margaret Drabble, that emerged in postwar Britain and whose books explored the struggles of young women seeking personal and financial independence, in sharp contrast to the contemporaneous “angry young men” literary movement defined by John Osborne and Kingsley Amis.Over her long career, Ms. Banks’s character portrayals were often called insensitive and her language offensive, particularly in her two best-known works. She was a complicated, sometimes contradictory figure who became increasingly unrepentant about her firmly held opinions.“The L-Shaped Room” (1960), lauded by critics as a second-wave feminist novel, tells the story of an unmarried secretary whose conservative, middle-class father throws her out of their home when she tells him she’s pregnant. Rather than reach out to the father of the child, she rents a small, L-shaped room at the top of a rooming house in London and becomes part of an improvised family of fellow boarders, including a Caribbean-born jazz musician. Class, race, sexism and the danger of illegal abortions are all central to the plot.Ms. Banks didn’t consider herself a feminist when she wrote the book; as a young woman coming of age in the 1950s, she said, she thought that men were superior.But she soon changed her mind. “What a joke,” she told the BBC’s program “Bookclub” in 2010. “I mean, I don’t believe that anymore. I think women are infinitely the superior sex and that men are probably the most dangerous creatures on the planet.”Ms. Banks came to regret the racial tropes used in her portrayal of the Caribbean housemate in “The L-Shaped Room,” acknowledging that racism had permeated her narrative. “The prejudices existed, and they came out in this book, and it’s shame-making, but there they were,” she told the BBC. “They were absolutely part of the atmosphere.”The novel became an immediate best seller in Britain and was made into a film, released in the United States in 1963 and starring Leslie Caron, who was nominated for an Oscar for best actress.After “The Indian in the Cupboard” was published in 1980, The New York Times hailed it as the best novel of the year for children. Ms. Banks wrote four sequels.The first book in the series begins when a boy, Omri, is given an old medicine cabinet with magical properties: When he places plastic action figures inside, they come alive. The first toy he brings to life is a Native American named Little Bear — the “Indian” of the title. One of Omri’s friends places his toy cowboy in the cabinet, and a well-worn conflict is set in motion.Although the purported message to young readers was the importance of tolerance and respect for other cultures, Ms. Banks was later accused of perpetuating stereotypes. (Little Bear speaks in a dialect of broken English, and the cowboy is a laconic man who likes his whiskey.)By the fourth book, “The Mystery of the Cupboard” (1993), critics had grown impatient with the clichéd characters that would step out of the magic cupboard. “Through its innocent-looking mirrored door march a succession of plucky, albeit creaky cultural stereotypes, ever predictable and true to the dictates of their sex, ethnic group or time,” the fiction writer Michael Dorris wrote in The New York Times Book Review.The American Indian Library Association in 1991 listed “The Indian in the Cupboard” series among the “titles to avoid,” and a school board in British Columbia temporarily removed the first book from its libraries in 1992, citing “offensive treatment of native peoples.”Still, the series remained popular, and “The Indian in the Cupboard” was adapted into a 1995 film directed by Frank Oz.Lynne Reid Banks was born in London on July 31, 1929. She was the only child of James and Muriel (Reid) Banks. Her father, who was Scottish, was a doctor; her mother, who was Irish and known as Pat, was an actress.As a child during World War II, Lynne was evacuated with her mother to Canada, where they settled in Saskatchewan. It was a mostly happy time, and the human cost of the war became clear only when she returned to London at 15.“I found my city in ruins,” she said in an interview for the reference work “Authors and Artists for Young Adults.” When she learned about the wartime hardships that the rest of her family had endured, she was horrified and ashamed. “I felt like a deserter,” she said.She first pursued a career as an actress, studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and working in repertory theater. She also began writing plays. In 1955, she became one of the first female television reporters in England, working for Independent Television News (later ITV). One day, she was asked to try out a new kind of typewriter in the newsroom. One sentence led to another, and she realized that she was writing in the voice of a woman who was pregnant, unmarried and on her own. These random first sentences became the seeds of “The L-shaped Room.”“I didn’t know I had a book,” she later told the BBC. “I knew I had a situation.”The success of the novel gave her the freedom to write full time, and she quit her television job. But her life took another turn when she met and married Chaim Stephenson, a sculptor, and moved to Israel to join him on a kibbutz.The move led her mother to accuse her of wasting her talent and placing herself in a dangerous and “soul-stunting” situation, Ms. Banks wrote in The Guardian in 2017. But she loved her adopted country, and she taught English and continued to write while raising three sons, until the family moved back to England in 1971.Ms. Banks wrote two sequels to “The L-Shaped Room” — “The Backward Shadow” (1970) and “Two is Lonely” (1974) — as well as two books on the Brontë sisters: “Dark Quartet: The Story of the Brontës” (1976) and “Path to the Silent Country: Charlotte Brontë’s Years of Fame” (1977).She began writing books for children and young adults in the 1970s, incorporating elements of magic and fantasy that would find full expression in “The Indian in the Cupboard.” She wrote more than 45 books for adults and children altogether, many with Jewish themes, as well as 13 plays produced for radio and theater.The challenges of single motherhood was a theme Ms. Banks returned to in 2014 in “Uprooted, A Canadian War Story,” a young adult novel based on the years that she and her mother spent in Canada during the war.She is survived by three sons, Adiel, Gillon and Omri Stephenson, and three grandchildren. Her husband died in 2016.Ms. Banks remained productive in her later years. “It’s great being old,” she wrote in The Guardian in 2017, in an essay on the advantages of aging. “I can be eccentric, self-indulgent — even offensive.”Indeed, at the age of 85, she touched off another literary furor when she wrote a letter objecting to The Guardian’s decision to award its children’s fiction prize to David Almond for his book “A Song for Ella Grey” (2015), writing that a book with “lesbian sex,” as well as swearing and drinking, was not appropriate for children.A predictable outcry in response to her letter followed. “Although I’m still on the outs with modern life,” she wrote, “being old means I’ve stopped minding what people think of my opinions.”Sofia Poznansky contributed reporting, [ad_2] Source link

[intolerancecare]

I hate that people who don't like you keeps on meddling with people that you want to like. Gone.

Stop. You don't understand that I am not tied to my molester and that my family is just my family. I also worked on my own.

Let me guess, you've chosen a rehab man for me right? I am for the likes of them only?

You said in your world, ate also means ate. I am your ate? a big sister? Noona? In my figurative world, it means no. But they said yes.

You know that I'm a rebel, right? They gave me to wrong people; how can I trust that they are right?

You know, I also cried for Carlos. Even though his is just a potential relationship. I was just too excited because finally I can be freed from the people that I really don't like. That Indian named bastard's people. Served to me (Approached me because they think I was poorer than them) They will say because I am not as practical as them? It's because I am dealing with people like them. Sexually active people are successful right? Sex is also a mileage? Names of big people? Those people can talk to them and teach them? Hawkings?

Question? You haven't read my previous entries.

Going back to Carlos, I like the idea that we have common interest. He has skills that I already know and that I can admire, if not the work, at least the effort. Practice makes perfect anyway.

Devils should be clean? Tell me, based on their body and faces, are they the successful type? If they are myth busters, people who broke the norms, What is their output? their proof? Their devilish scheming conniving stories?

I'm thinking of returning the cat that I adopted. I'm done with my literary fantasy. I really wanted the small cat.

There is a student in my previous university who always aced the revies classes and who also aced the board exam. The mock test is always based on Mosby? and other foreign books or old exam. Our reviewers have memorized the pages and question numbers in every test. Our local board was different. The literature was different. It's like reading a Patterson and Nancy drew being the latter. I don't think that girl got an honorary award during graduation. I have a classmate in high school who got a laude award. I can't really comprehend how he was able to get an award like that. I know him. Even his behaviour (which of course reflects his learning attitude) His personality didn't change, so it means he is still the same. Now I am in FEU. Most of the people I know there took NCLEX (they are higher?) I am a fraud now? Like the people I hate? Too much for making me feel a lowly creature. 2 rehabs for my online posts.

I am a trash now.

How 'bout you? How clean are you behind your monitors?

Do you know me?

I failed in call centres? They don't know the answer. They can't tell us. Maybe they think that Americans are depress people who just needs counselling. Why would Americans ask about your knowledge of football games or the name of teams? A cable company need not to answer that. All your ads in US state will tell the game schedules. Wrong? So, we really should know the game? It's the peak season? Not Pay per view. No. A brochure of football teams. Scattered in the office. No schedule written (because it was printed before the season started) Genius? I also met a senior who dealt with customers as if he is a credit card agent. Duh, it was just a cable account. If the customer won't pay, their connection will be cut off. No need to keep their number and call them anytime you want. No dealings are necessary.

Faces of deprived people? Borrowed faces?

[anuggya21]

Unveiling the Top Thriller Books of 2023: A Must-Read Collection

WAR OF BROTHERHOODS

by Sumit Agarwal

In the realm of literature, a great book isn't just a story it's an invitation to explore new worlds, challenge established beliefs, and embark on extraordinary journeys. Today, I am introducing a literary gem that accomplishes all of this and more: "War of Brotherhoods."

Written by the talented IITian Sumit Agarwal, this newly published thriller book promises to take readers on an unforgettable adventure. At its core, "War of Brotherhoods" is a tale of suspense, intrigue, and redemption.

Kabir, a distinguished Indian military intelligence officer, who has dedicated nearly a decade to unraveling the enigma surrounding the disappearance of an aircraft MH470. His relentless pursuit of the truth leads him to the depths of the ocean, where he embarks on a perilous submarine expedition in search of crucial debris.

But fate has other plans for Kabir. During his expedition, he falls seriously ill and finds himself hospitalized in Kuala Lumpur, the very city where the secrets of the aircraft vanishing act lie hidden. As Kabir unfolds the truth. An unyielding assassin is dispatched to erase him from the equation, and it's at this pivotal moment that salvation arrives in the form of Keira, a US secret service agent with her own enigmatic agenda.

However, this is just the prologue of a story that will keep you riveted from start to finish. Kabir's life takes an unexpected turn when he is contacted by a clandestine society, beckoning him to embark on a mission that transcends national borders. He finds himself in a world where moral boundaries blur, and the fate of humanity rests in the balance.

What makes "War of Brotherhoods" truly remarkable is its narrative structure, which seamlessly weaves together two timelines. This dual storytelling approach adds layers of complexity and intrigue to the plot, keeping readers enthralled and eager to uncover what lies ahead.

At its heart, "War of Brotherhoods" delves deep into the role of religion in terrorism, war, and the enduring suffering of mankind. It raises thought-provoking questions about the human condition, the choices we make, and the consequences of our actions.

If you're seeking a literary adventure that challenges your perspective, ignites your imagination, and keeps you guessing until the very last page, "War of Brotherhoods" is the book for you. It's more than just a thriller; it's an exploration of the intricacies of the human spirit.

I invite you to embark on this captivating journey by getting your copy of "War of Brotherhoods" on Amazon. Join the conversation, share your thoughts, and let's immerse into the depths of this extraordinary fictional world together.

CLICK HERE TO BUY!

Happy reading, and may this book open doors to new horizons of thought and wonder!

[thereadingbud]

Top Literary Agents in India

India’s literary scene is burgeoning, with a diverse array of voices waiting to be heard. Central to this ecosystem are literary agents, who bridge the gap between authors and publishers. In this article, we delve into the top literary agents in India, highlighting their unique contributions to the industry. The Significance of Literary Agents Literary agents in India serve as vital catalysts…

[lifeaholiclady27]

The Appeal of Sujata Massey’s ‘A Murder on Malabar Hill’: A Brilliant and Believable Female Detective and a Gripping Story

The Rise of Indian Female Sleuths in the Literary World I discovered the Perveen Mistry Investigates series while reading an online article about Indian women detectives. They are rare in the world of noir, where Miss Marple, Nancy Drew, Agent Starling, and Lisbeth Salander have made their mark. Gender stereotypes have often hindered the portrayal of Indian women as aloof, observant, and bold…

[prabhatprakashan12]

Song of The Trinity: The Rise of Kali

Sai Chandravadhan Bommadevara writes under the pen name of Vadhan. He is an author with four published books. He intends to unravel the Stories, mysteries, poignances and wonders of India, one thriller at a time.

While his first book, ‘Shatru', a prequel to "Song of the Trinity", a fantasy series, is a thriller based on the Puranas, Upanishads, and Vedas. His second book, ‘Agniputr', is based on a single stanza from Yajurveda. His third book, ‘Fear of God', deals with corruption and vigilantism. His fourth book, ‘The Vimana Transcripts, is a thriller based on ancient Indian temples and is rated as one of the five top thrillers of 2021 by the Indian Booktuber.

Read more : Song of The Trinity: The Rise of Kali

A lawyer by qualification, Vadhan Started his career as a constitutional lawyer, working and learning with some of the top lawyers in India. In 2000, he transitioned to regulatory compliance services. Currently, Vadhan is an executive director in one of the four largest consulting firms, leading regulatory compliance services for multinational and transnational corporations across more than 70 countries.

Acknowledgments

This book started it all. And here we are at last, bringing it into this world. Let me acknowledge the genesis for this work. It was a simple request for a bedtime story from my little kids. Now, my daughter's moved to Australia to set up her own family and my son is a budding actor, lawyer and what not. The story grew up too. It's no longer a bedtime story. It is supported by no less than the Vedic masters. I have relied on the Rig Veda, Upanishads, Ayyavazhi, Puranas and many other ancient texts to write this one.

Have no doubt, it's a fantasy thriller based in the present day. But there are worlds in it, mythical creatures, Gods and demons and a supreme evil. In short, it's a fun, fast paced book to read.

I have to acknowledge the extraordinary knowledge and insight of the ancient masters. Every word had a meaning, every sentence symbolized their intellect. Thank you O great ones, from the bottom of my heart.

I will fail in my duty if I don't recount the extraordinary support from my wife, Sonia Venugopal. She is, as I keep saying in every book of mine, my toughest critic but for this one, she

put in her best so far. She read the various drafts that came out a million times, critiquing them with the precision and intellect that only she possesses. Need I add, she is a Virgo. The crowning glory of her contribution to this work is the extraordinary cover that she designed for it. It helped that she is a graphic designer but the cover encapsulates the core of the book so beautifully and it only goes to prove how she owned the work and put her best into it. My heartfelt gratitude. What will I be without you? I am so blessed.

When I reached out to Suhail Mathur, my literary agent, friend and guide in the world of books that the manuscript was finally ready, to be honest, he didn't like the title for the work that I had thought of at that time. Not one bit!

We tried many things until it hit me that the most obvious choice for the book should and must be 'Song of the Trinity'. It cannot be anything else. When you read it, you'll know why. He liked it too. Which is important to me. Suhail took the time to read through the book and give me his inputs

Read more:The Rise of Kali

[zindagi-jhandwa-firbhi-ghamandwa]

I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it didn't even matter.

The story of how I almost achieved my life's goal.

So, I recently decided to kill my authorial ambitions. I came close and it was a good run, but I was going nowhere and the goal was getting further away from me each day.

I was signed to an agency in late 2016 and started developing a non-fiction book for them in 2017. It took forever, but I had an agent and an editor/co-agent and I felt confident in my writing and the concept. After all, I was an Indian writer who had been spotted and signed by a British literary agency. The old colonial masters thought I was a worthy exponent of their tongue. What an honour!

Around 2021, I had my draft ready. My agent and editor gave me their final thoughts — which I honestly felt took away a lot of the irreverent comedy in my writing, but that's showbiz baby — and my proposal was ready to roll.

Then my agent told me that as a nobody with no name, no connections, no nepotism or sex appeal, I had to convince publishers that I had an audience. I had to go on social media (which I had quit for my mental health) and amass followers.

I argued that it's not how many followers you have, it's how dedicated they are. After all, Jesus only had 12. Well, 11 plus Judas. It didn't work.

And so, I spent 2021–22 trying to get followers. I posted on Instagram and LinkedIn and used hashtags and tried to "create engaging content" and my follower number grew from 200 to 215.

Then, in 2022 I suffered two setbacks. First, I had a serious motorcycle accident that almost killed me. And second, my editor — a middle-aged white woman — went down the Facebook right-wing radicalization rabbit hole and was soon telling me that Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong and woke people are the biggest threat to the world and TERF is a slur on par with the N-word. A woman who campaigned for Jeremy Corbyn was now a born-again Trump supporter.

She was also my co-agent and hence my only conduit to my proper agent, who was still expecting me to build that audience before she went to any more publishers.

I tried to keep publishing content online and made reels and was even considering starting a YouTube channel when I woke up and smelled the coffee. 20 new followers after nearly 3 years of trying.

The numbers don't lie. This dream was destroying my life, my health, my career and my relationships. Not to mention, it was pissing on the dying embers of what remained of my self-worth.

I got a job and decided to make a career for myself. Live out other goals. Save money to travel for 2 weeks a year. Watch Netflix.

I'm not author material. I might be a decent enough writer to work as a Senior Content Specialist at a mid-tier Indian IT Services company, but that's it. That's my level.

But I feel like I'm going through a bad break-up. I suddenly remember what I hoped my life would be like and I feel like curling into a ball and crying or jumping off the bridge next to my office.

I look at my draft and remember how happy I felt as it took shape. When I do, it feels like I'm looking at pictures of an ex or at the ultrasound of a miscarriage.

No break-up has hurt this much. I feel like JGL in 500 Days of Summer, my expectations were just as unrealistic and I probably deserve this misery.

Every now and then, I catch myself thinking of ideas for books, articles or stories and I feel a momentary sense of excitement to write it until I remember that this dream is dead.

When will this stop? When do dead dreams finally find peace and move on from this realm? And if they're undead dreams, how do I remove the head or destroy the brain?

[usnewsrank]

Salman Rushdie ‘loses sight in one eye and use of hand’ after New York stabbing

Salman Rushdie ‘loses sight in one eye and use of hand’ after New York stabbing

The British-Indian writer has been left with life-changing injuries (Picture: AP) Salman Rushdie has lost sight in an eye and the use of one of his hands after a knifeman attacked him in New York, his agent has revealed. The British-American novelist was stabbed in the neck and torso moments before he was due to give a talk on artistic freedom at a literary event on August 12. Miraculously, the…