Novels

NIGHT SCHOOL

I have just finished my first novel, NIGHT SCHOOL. Exploring 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.

I have been working on NIGHT SCHOOL for many years, and as such, the manuscript has garnered recognition and attention along the way. 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 2016 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 2020 The Bath Novel Award (out of 1735 manuscripts) and was awarded a 2021 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 will go on sale this Autumn 2024 via my agent Abi Fellows of DHH Literary Agency, so watch this space!

AN IMPERIAL TYPEWRITER

I have been awarded a 2024 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 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 B3 Media about it) and, during my PhD, will write a historical novel about the strike, as well as a critical thesis about the ethics politics of contemporary storytelling, discussing it in relation to my own work. (The novelist Winnie Li mentored me for the opening chapters of this novel via the SI Leeds Literary Prize.)

TV Series

My partner, the writer Rajeev Balasubramanyam, and I are working on a TV script.

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.