South Asian Poetry & Fiction

Hello, All. How are we doing? Keeping well, I hope?

This year, South Asian Writers was proud to partner with South Asian Heritage Month to deliver the 2021 Literature Programme. Our founder, Natasha has been busy talking to schools, councils, and libraries across the country about how we can diversify and decolonise our bookshelves and hold space for South Asian stories and experiences. We’ve put together some core reading lists with recommendations across multiple genres that celebrate just a handful of the diverse and intersectional voices from the diaspora and that, we hope, can serve as a starting point for some much needed discourse around how we view the truth about our history, heritage, culture, and lived experiences.

Here are some of our top picks for poetry and fiction. There are some exciting voices here, including spoken word artists, writers exploring identity and the twice migrant experience, and self published authors who’ve captured glorious slices of South Asian identity that make you yearn for a home that lives somewhere deep in your bones. Also, there’s truly some of the most exciting crime fiction this year has to offer. Links and and purchase info below:

• We Are All Birds of Uganda: Hafsa Zayyan
• Re: Desire: Afshan D’Souza Lhodi
• Would I Lie To You? Aliya Al Afsal
• The Khan: Saima Mir
• Half Woman Half Grief: Maya Kalaria
• Take It Back: Kia Abdullah
• Louisiana Catch: Sweta Srivastava Vikram
• Jam Is For Girls Girls Get Jam: Shagufta K Iqbal
• Kololo HIll: Neema Shah
• Of Necessity And Wanting: Sascha Ahktar
• Galaxy Walk: Shareefa Energy
• The Blood Divide: A A Dhand

-N