Letters to a Writer of Color with Deepa Anappara, Taymour Soomro, Amitava Kumar, and Madeleine Thien
Thursday, 7:00 pm EDT April 20, 2023
The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed
The Ticket/Voucher option includes a $10 Bookstore voucher, redeemable toward the featured event book on the night of the event. All registrants will receive a link to livestream the event.
“To write like my peers in a Western classroom I have to erase myself, but if I erase myself I have no story” —Deepa Anappara, “On the Ideal Conditions for Writing” in Letters to a Writer of Color
The Center for Fiction is thrilled to celebrate the release of Letters to a Writer of Color, a revelatory and captivating collection of essays from an international array of writers of color. Full of heart, humor, instruction, and inspiration, the collection challenges the codes and conventions that have shaped our assumptions about how fiction should be written, and celebrates the power of literature as a means of liberation. Editors Deepa Anappara (Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line) and Taymour Soomro (Other Names for Love) are joined by contributors Amitava Kumar (Immigrant, Montana) and Madeleine Thien (Do Not Say we Have Nothing) for an essential conversation on writing, reading, representation, and resistance. This is a can’t-miss event for aspiring and working writers and curious readers everywhere.

In Conversation
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Deepa Anappara
Deepa Anappara
Deepa Anappara grew up in Kerala, southern India, and worked as a journalist in cities including Mumbai and Delhi. Her debut novel, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and NPR. It won the Edgar Award for Best Novel, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Indian Literature. It has been translated into more than twenty languages.
Photo Credit: Liz Seabrook
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Taymour Soomro
Taymour Soomro
Taymour Soomro was born in Lahore, Pakistan. He has worked as a corporate solicitor in London and Milan, an agricultural estate manager in rural Pakistan, and a publicist for a luxury fashion brand in London. His short fiction has been published in the New Yorker, and he is the author of the novel Other Names for Love.
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Amitava Kumar
https://www.amitavakumar.com/Amitava Kumar
https://www.amitavakumar.com/Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist who was born in Ara, in India, and now teaches at Vassar College in upstate New York. He is the author of several works of nonfiction and three novels. His novel Immigrant, Montana was on the best of the year lists at the New Yorker, the New York Times, and President Obama’s list of favorite books of 2018. His new novel A Time Outside This Time was described by the New Yorker magazine as “a shimmering assault on the Zeitgeist.” His most recent title, The Blue Book: A Writer’s Journal, is a collection of drawings and journal entries. Kumar’s work has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, Harper’s, BRICK, Guernica, the Nation and several other publications. He has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and residencies from Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Lannan Foundation.
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Madeleine Thien
Madeleine Thien
Madeleine Thien is the author of four books of fiction, most recently Do Not Say We Have Nothing and Dogs at the Perimeter. She has received Canada’s two highest literary honours, the Giller Prize and the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and her books have been shortlisted for The Booker Prize, The Women’s Prize for Fiction, and The Folio Prize, longlisted for a Carnegie Medal, and translated into more than 25 languages. Her essays and stories can be found in the New Yorker, Granta, Brick, the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. She teaches writing and literature at Brooklyn College.
Photo Credit: Rawi Hage
Featured Book
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Letters to a Writer of Color
By Deepa Anappara & Taymour Soomro
Published by Penguin Random House
A vital collection of essays on the power of literature and the craft of writing from an international array of writers of color, sharing the experiences, cultural traditions, and convictions that have shaped them and their work, featuring:
- Taymour Soomro on resisting rigid stories about who you are
- Madeleine Thien on how writing builds the room in which it can exist
- Amitava Kumar on why authenticity isn’t a license we carry in our wallets
- Tahmima Anam on giving herself permission to be funny
- Ingrid Rojas Contreras on the bodily challenge of writing about trauma
- Zeyn Joukhadar on queering English and the power of refusing to translate ourselves
- Myriam Gurba on the empowering circle of Latina writers she works within
- Kiese Laymon on hearing that no one wants to read the story that you want to write
- Mohammed Hanif on the censorship he experienced at the hands of political authorities
- Deepa Anappara on writing even through conditions that impede the creation of art
- Plus, essays from Tiphanie Yanique, Xiaolu Guo, Jamil Jan Kochai, Vida Cruz-Borja, Femi Kayode, Nadifa Mohamed in conversation with Leila Aboulela, and Sharlene Teo
Filled with empathy and wisdom, instruction and inspiration, this book encourages us to reevaluate the codes and conventions that have shaped our assumptions about how fiction should be written, and also challenges us to apply its lessons to both what we read and how we read. The start of a more inclusive conversation about storytelling, it will be a touchstone for aspiring and working writers and for curious readers everywhere.