Novels

NIGHT SCHOOL

My first novel, NIGHT SCHOOL, explores the blurred lines between admiration and infatuation, and the devastating consequences when the boundaries between teacher and pupil are abused, NIGHT SCHOOL is a story of female friendship, intellectual rivalry, and the transformational power of finding one’s own creative voice.

NIGHT SCHOOL has been the recipient of a Writing East Midlands Mentorship, a Literary Consultancy Mentorship, and an Arts Council Grant. In a former incarnation and under the working title of RUNAWAY, it was shortlisted for PRH #WriteNowLive, longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers' Award (made the final 8 of 885 entries), longlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize, and an early draft received an honorary mention in the Harry Bowling Prize for New Writing. The opening of NIGHT SCHOOL was published in Issue 1 of The Good Journal, edited by Nikesh Shukla. NIGHT SCHOOL was also longlisted for The Bath Novel Award (out of 1735 manuscripts that year) and was awarded an Arts Council England ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ bursary. Most recently, it was longlisted for the 2022 SI Leeds Literary Prize, for which I was awarded a mentorship with novelist Winnie Li. (I used to work on my second novel, detailed below.)

NIGHT SCHOOL is on submission.

AN IMPERIAL TYPEWRITER

In 2024, I was awarded an AHRC CHASE-funded PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at The University of East Anglia to explore my second novel, AN IMPERIAL TYPEWRITER, which is a historical novel based on the 1974 strike at Imperial Typewriters in Leicester. I have been an expert historical researcher on the strike since 2014 (see www.strikeatimperial.net for my collaboration with Marc Boothe at B3 Media about it). Alongside the novel, I will write a critical thesis about the ethics and politics of contemporary storytelling, discussing it in relation to my creative process.

Short Story Collection

I’m putting together a short story collection, using new and old stories. It centres South Asian women and is based on the theme of transformation.