about
Janice Pariat is a storyteller of British, Portuguese, and indigenous Khasi origins. She is the award-winning author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories, along with the novels Seahorse and Nine Chambered-Heart, bestselling in India. Her writings have been translated into ten languages, including Italian, Spanish, French, and German. In 2013, she received the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction.
Her novel Everything the Light Touches was featured in The New Yorker’s list of Best Books of 2022 and earned her multiple literary prizes, including the Author Award for Best Fiction, the Sushila Devi Award, the Pen and Paper Fiction Award, and the Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize in 2023.
In 2014, Janice was the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Kent, UK, and later a Writer in Residence at the TOJI Residency in South Korea in 2019. In Fall 2024, she was a resident at the Rockefeller Foundation Centre at Bellagio, Italy.
Currently, she teaches Creative Writing and Art History at Ashoka University. She splits her time between Shillong and New Delhi, where she lives 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, unexpectedly, through the adventures and life choices of four unique characters--Shai, Evelyn, Goethe, and Linnaeus.
All is resonance, we discover; all is connection.
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 next.
Janice Pariat's exquisitely written novel is about the fragile, fragmented nature of identity.
Nem is a student of English literature at Delhi University, navigating the intricate amorous complexities of campus life.
His journey takes an exciting turn following a chance encounter with an art historian, which immerses him in a world of pleasure and artistic discovery.
These 15 stories provide a unique perspective on India’s northeast and its people, set against a broader historical backdrop that includes the early days of the British Raj, the World Wars, conversions to Christianity, and the roles played by missionaries.
This book is an offering—of prose, poetry, musical lyrics, and visual art—by the women of Meghalaya. These are stories of quiet unrest, political turbulence, joy, celebration, womanhood, queerness, all brought together in one volume by Janice Pariat, a novelist and poet 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 migrations across the globe, that my story, as all our biographies, began a long time ago. That I carry the stories of my ancestors. And this has opened me up to the world in a way that I didn’t think possible."
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."
The Guardian, UK
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 author Janice Pariat delves into her enriching 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!