Join Ranbir Singh Sidhu and Tanwi Nandini Islam for the launch of DEEP SINGH BLUE. Both will read from their debut novels, and discuss the ways they have re-invent the immigrant narrative using their own experiences and by creating first-generation protagonists that defy stereotypes.
Tuesday, March 15, Word Bookstore, 126 Franklin St, Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Click here for the Facebook invite.
This is a short piece from a longer project, based on the Tarot, which one day might be finished. I think I’m two-thirds of the way there now. Check it out in the latest issue of that fantastic magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, and while there, check out the other pieces too. 
It’s a rare event when a major new literary magazine comes out of India, and rarer still that one of such scope and deep seriousness as The Byword emerges. But here it is, and to me it is a real cause for celebration. If you’re in India, run out to your local bookstore and see if you can get a copy, and if they don’t have one, tell them to order it. I’m proud to say I’ve got a major new story, “Jerusalem”, in the debut issue, but there’s so much else besides, and much of it fantastic. Finally, in India, a print venue where not only new writing is published, but also celebrated.
Much that happens in the writing world is supported by people who do it just for the love of art — as those of us who write so often do. So here’s a shout out to the fine people at indianshortstoryinenglish.com — and their excellent work in putting together a compendium of what’s happening right now in the Indian short story form (as practiced by those who write in English). You can check out my page by clicking here, or on the image below, and search through the site to find some really fine writers of the form.
Kelly Lynn Thomas reviews Good Indian Girls over at her blog.
Although most of the stories focus on the experiences of Indian immigrants in America, these are not the typical “adjust to American life” or clash-of-culture tales. Instead, Sidhu writes stories that take place at the convergence of the darkest aspects of the two cultures. These are modern gothic stories wherein each sentence is like a surgeon’s exacting scalpel cutting away ideas we hold dear. I didn’t notice a single line that sounded awkward or that didn’t ring true.
Very happy to report that my story The “Lost” Chapter of John Jourdain will appear in the upcoming Fall issue of Conjunctions.
A feature interview over at India Abroad this week. Check it out here.
For readers in India, the wonderful folk at HarperCollins are putting out e-singles for the Kindle in a new, and beautifully designed, series called Harper 21. The current batch focus on the short story form, and they’ve included my story “The Consul’s Wife.” If you’re in India, and own a Kindle, it’s a mere 21 rupees, which is a steal by any standard. Click here to purchase.
Read an extended excerpt from the title story over at The Aerogram.
That night she dreamed of a naked old man in a cowboy hat hopping cross-legged from one feathery cloud to another while his knees streamed blood and his limp penis flopped menacingly between his hairy thighs. The dream must mean something and she told herself to write it down and think on it, though she never did, and a week later, trying to recall it, all she could remember was a floating cowboy hat taunting her from the heavens. The memory held an erotic charge, though why, Lovedeep could not say.
The fine folks at The Aerogram have published an extended interview with me on the book. Take a look here.
In my view, one of the central purposes of art is to unsettle, and to destabilize our own fixed notions of who we are, and who our fellow humans are. If, after having read this collection, the ground is a little more unsteady under the reader’s feet, then I’ve done my job. There’s something of the natural provocateur in me, and I get bored when everyone is going along nicely and not questioning the larger structures of their own lives. So I do hope that it provokes, and that it reaches those people who are at the moment sitting a little too comfortably in their own lives.
RANBIR SIDHU 