about
Janice Pariat is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories, the novels Seahorse and The Nine Chambered-Heart, bestselling in India, and translated into ten languages including Italian, Spanish, French, and German. She was awarded the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013.
Her novel Everything the Light Touches was published by HarperCollins India, Borough Press UK, and HarperVia USA in October 2022. It was included in The New Yorker’s list of Best Books of 2022, and awarded the Auther Award for Best Fiction, the Sushila Devi Award, and the Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize.
In 2014, she was the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Kent, UK, and a Writer in Residence at the TOJI Residency in South Korea in 2019. In Fall 2024, Janice will be a resident at the Rockefeller Foundation Centre at Bellagio, Italy.
Currently, she teaches Creative Writing and Art History at Ashoka University and lives between Shillong and New Delhi with a cat of many names.
books
In this bold, brilliant work, journeys across continents and centuries carefully intertwine in a multi-layered saga that unfolds through the adventures and life choices of four unique characters.
A compendium of shifting perspectives, set in nameless cities, moving between the east and west, that follows one woman’s life, making her dazzlingly real in one moment, and obscuring her in the very next.
Nem is a student of English literature at Delhi University. He drifts through the amorous complexities of campus life, until a chance encounter with an art historian steers him into a world of pleasure and artistic discovery.
These 15 stories offer a unique way of looking at India’s northeast and its people set against a larger historical canvas—the early days of the British Raj, the World Wars, conversions to
Christianity, and the missionaries.
This book is an offering—of prose, poetry, musical lyrics, and visual art—by the women of Meghalaya in Northeast India. Edited by poet and novelist Janice Pariat, who also comes from these hills.
in the press: Highlights
INTERVIEWS
"Only recently have I learned to acknowledge that I am a child of vast historical processes, of vast movements and migration..."
The Diasporic Sensibility: An Interview with Janice Pariat for "Indian Writing in English", Hyderabad University
REVIEWS
"As the reader journeys through this atmospheric and accomplished novel, they discover that the natural world around us is loud enough for those willing to listen, and Pariat has found the language for it."
Review of "Everything the Light Touches" by Sana Goyal for "The Guardian"
VIDEOS
"I think your duty is to tell the stories that are the closest to you."
In this episode of the Teamwork Arts Podcast, award-winning writer Janice Pariat delves into her journey as a writer, exploring the diverse dimensions of literature and emphasising the significance of authentically portraying stories that are the closest to us. Furthermore, she shares fascinating insights into the rich oral storytelling traditions of North-East India and talks about following stories wherever they take her!