ANJALI DUVA
Anjali Mitter Duva is an Indian-American writer raised in France. She is the author of the bestselling historical novel Faint Promise of Rain which was shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. She was a 2018 Finalist for a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. Anjali co-founded and runs the Arlington Author Salon, a quarterly literary series with a twist, is a Fiction Co-Editor at Solstice Literary Magazine, and an instructor at GrubStreet. She is also a co-founder of Chhandika, a non-profit organization that teaches and presents India's classical storytelling kathak dance. Anjali was educated at Brown University and MIT. She lives in the Greater Boston area with her husband and two children, for whose friends she has run a decade-long book club for kids.
SESSION: Writing While Multilingual: How to Leverage Your Languages for Strong Fiction
The circumstances of our growing up, colonization, immigration, and belonging versus otherness all influence how we feel about and use our languages. We will explore how our relationships with our languages influence what and how we write, and address the challenges of incorporating elements of foreign languages and cultures in fiction for audiences who are not familiar with them. Using excerpts by writers such as Aleksandar Hemon, Oscar Casares, Edwige Danticat, and Amitav Ghosh, we will identify some practical techniques for when and how to use different languages to craft the strongest, truest fiction.
CO-PRESENTER: Henriette Lazaridis