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Members
Reshma Ruia
Reshma Ruia is an award-winning author and poet. The Sunday Times described her first novel, Something Black in the Lentil Soup, as ‘a gem of straight-faced comedy.’ Her second novel manuscript, A Mouthful of Silence, was shortlisted for the 2014 SI Leeds Literary Prize, published as Still Lives in June 2022 and awarded the 2023 Diverse Book Readers’ Choice Award in October 2023.
Her short stories and poems have appeared in British and International anthologies and magazines and commissioned for BBC Radio 4.
Her poetry collection, A Dinner Party in the Home Counties, won the 2019 Debut Word Masala Award. Her short story collection, Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness was published in 2021.
She has a PhD and Masters in Creative Writing from Manchester University (Distinction) as well as a Bachelor, and Masters’ Degree with Distinction from the London School of Economics.
She is the co-founder of The Whole Kahani, fiction editor of Jaggery magazine and book reviewer for Words of Colour.
reshmaruia.com
Twitter/X: @ReshmaRuia
Kavita A. Jindal
Kavita A. Jindal is an award-winning poet, novelist and essayist. She is the author of Manual For A Decent Life which won the Eastern Eye Award for Literature 2020 and the Brighthorse Prize.
She has published two poetry collections to critical acclaim: Patina and Raincheck Renewed.
Her work has appeared in anthologies and literary journals worldwide and been broadcast on BBC Radio, Zee TV and European radio stations. She has contributed fiction, non-fiction and poetry to more than thirty anthologies published variously in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, India, Hong Kong, Germany and Romania.
Her poem Kabariwala is included in 100 Great Indian Poems published by Bloomsbury in 2018. Her poem Act of Faith is included in the anthology ‘Unseen’ which is in the UK GCSE and A Levels syllabus.
She served as Senior Editor at Asia Literary Review and she is co-founder of The Whole Kahani.
kavitajindal.com
Twitter/X: @writerkavita
facebook.com/kavitajindalauthor
instagram.com/fablerkavita
amzn.to/3i6urk6
Mona Dash
Mona Dash is the author of A Roll of the Dice : a story of loss, love and genetics (Linen Press, 2019) winner of the Eyelands International Book Awards for memoir (2020), and Let Us Look Elsewhere (Dahlia Books, June ’21), which was a finalist in the Eyelands Book Awards 2021 and Tagore Literary Prize 2023.
Her stories have been showcased on BBC Radio 4 and also in the Best British Short Story anthology.
Her other published books are A Certain Way, Untamed Heart, and Dawn-drops.
Her work has been listed in leading competitions such as Novel London 20, SI Leeds Literary award, Fish, Bath, Bristol, Leicester Writes and Asian Writer, and widely published in international journals and more than thirty five anthologies. A graduate in Telecoms Engineering, she holds an MBA, and also a Masters in Creative Writing (with distinction).
She is head of AI sales, Europe in a global technology company and lives in London.
monadash.net
Twitter/X: @Dash2Mona
Nadia Kabir Barb
Nadia Kabir Barb is a British Bangladeshi writer and journalist and the author of Truth or Dare, a collection of short stories (Renard Press 2023, Bengal Lights Books 2017) listed in ‘The Best of 2023’ by the Indie Press Network. Her stories have featured in various international literary journals and anthologies. Can You See Me was a winner of the Audio Arcadia short story competition. Her poems have featured in The PostLib Journal and Visual Verse. She was longlisted for the 2021 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews First Novel Award.
Nadia was a long standing columnist for the leading English language newspapers in Bangladesh, The Daily Star and Dhaka Tribune. She holds a BA Hons from SOAS, and an MSc from the London School of Economics and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has worked in the health and development sector in both the UK and Bangladesh.
She is the writer in residence 2024 for CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) RPG.
Catherine Menon
Catherine Menon is the author of Fragile Monsters, published in 2021 by Viking and shortlisted for the Society of Authors Gordon Bowker Prize and the Authors’ Club First Novel Award.
Her debut short story collection, Subjunctive Moods, was published by Dahlia Publishing in 2018.
She has a PhD in pure mathematics and an MA in creative writing from City University, for which she won the annual prize.
She’s won or been placed in a number of competitions, including the Fish, Bridport, London Short Story, Bare Fiction, Willesden Herald, Asian Writer, Leicester Writes, Winchester Writers Festival and Short Fiction Journal awards.
Her work has been published in a number of literary journals, including The Good Journal and Asian Literary Review and has been broadcast on radio.
Bluesky: @catherinemenon.bsky.social
Radhika Kapur
Radhika Kapur’s work as a Writer/Creative Director in advertising has won awards at Cannes, One Show, Asia Pacific Adfest, Clio and the Bombay Ad Club.
She also writes short fiction and scripts. Her writing has appeared in the Feminist Review, Poem International and The Pioneer.
She won third place in the Euroscript Screenwriting Competition (2015) was longlisted for the BBC Script Room 12 (Drama – 2017) and the London Short Story Prize (2016).
She is currently pursuing an MA in Screenwriting from Birkbeck, University of London.
Twitter/X: @radhikakapur
Deblina Chakrabarty
Deblina Chakrabarty is a freelance writer and a Bombayite relocated to London since the past 6 years.
Since 2005 she’s written for various publications in India including Times of India, DNA, Man’s World, and various other dailies as well as magazines.
She’s primarily interested in the chasm between genders, cultures, cities and lovers that form open terrain for the curious examinations of her pen (well, keyboard).
By day she flirts on the fringes of storytelling, working for international distribution at a major Hollywood studio.
Khadija Rouf
Khadija Rouf lives in the UK, and writes poetry and fiction when not working in her day job for the NHS.
She has an MA in Poetry from Manchester Metropolitan University, and has had more than poems published in journals such as Orbis, Sarasvati, Dream Catcher and Six Seasons.
Her short stories have been commended in the Manchester Fiction Prize (in 2016 and 2017) and her poetry was commended in Hippocrates Poetry Prize for Poetry and Medicine (2017).
She has self-published Gloria Exbat, a novella for children and young adults.
Most recently, she has been published in These Are The Hands, an anthology of poems about the Health Service, edited by Deborah Alma and Katie Amiel (published by Fair Acre Press, and proceeds going to NHS Charities Together COVID appeal).
