Category: Anita’s Notes

The Attic Lecture by VK Karthika will be followed by Anita’s Attic – Season Five Grand Finale.

Join seventeen authors for an evening of reading and conversations, mentored by Anita Nair as they read out 17 short pieces of ragtime showcasing their literary strengths at the Rangoli – Metro Art Center on 21 September 2017.

The Season 5 batch of writers, a group from diverse walks of life and interest will present their best narratives with a musical background, to mark their graduation – an intense twelve-week creative writing mentorship program by renowned author Anita Nair.

As Season 5 of Anita’s Attic hit session 10, and the imminent end of the mentorship program looms, it is only natural that the writers start wondering what next? And it is to precisely answer this daunting question that can overwhelm and drown a writer’s confidence that we called in the marines.

Read that as Jayapriya Vasudevan, India’s first literary agent whose international agency Jacaranda Press first set up twenty years ago represents 90 writers across the globe.

Calm, collected and full of kindliness, Jayapriya gave the writers a comprehensive introduction to what an agent can and can’t do. And a realistic picture of the life and times of a manuscript submitted.

Thank you Jayapriya for being the bright light of hope you are!

Just what does an editor in a publishing house look for in a manuscript ?

This is a question that worries every writer working on a book. And who better than Ajitha G S, the editor who has worked on some of the finest fiction and non-fiction published from Ghachar Ghochhar to A Feast of Vultures to the Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India to talk about it to the Season 5 writers at Anita’s Attic.

Thank you Ajitha.

Very often, movies and TV series gloss over how for every writer who goes on to become a published author, there are hundreds who don’t make it. Sometimes an insight can make the difference from wanna be to will be.

So one of the highlights of the mentoring program at Anita’s Attic is to invite publishing experts to speak to the writers.

Our first publishing expert for Season 5 was Udayan Mitra, Publisher, 4th Estate, HarperCollins India who led the writers through the alley ways of the publishing world and on what to expect.

Thank you Udayan. We loved having you at the Attic.

So what do you do when one of the writers who has impressed you in recent times is Youssef Rakha who lives in Cairo and you still want the writers at Anita’s Attic to interact with him after having read one of his stories The Boy Jihadi ?

Bring in the marines or in our case *conditionsApply. And so despite the distance, the time zones and borders, our guest speaker for the week made his presence felt and how.

It is critical for aspiring writers and published authors to carve out a niche in the digital space, to ensure they find room in the bookshelves in physical and digital stores.

As part of that process, all Anita’s Attic writers of Season 5 were taken through a session on staking their digital territory by Biju Ebenezer B

Thank you *conditionsapply for your support.

Thus began Season 5 of Anita’s Attic. And who better to kick-start the season than the utterly brilliant, erudite and amazing Kiran Nagarkar?

In Bangalore to celebrate the publication of the box set of the Ravan & Eddie Trilogy and the 43rd year of publication of his first novel Six Sevens are Forty-Three, Kiran Nagarkar made the time to come by to the Attic and spend time with the 17 writers present.

Over the course of an hour Kiran talked to the writers about what it means to be an artist – The joys and triumphs; the trials and tribulations.

Thank you Kiran Nagarkar and thank you HarperCollins India for facilitating this talk.

Image Source, Credits & Rights : Wikipedia

I have always felt that nothing could explain the feeling of Art more appropriately than this.

This is an excerpt from The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857 that captures for me, the very essence of the creative process.