The Fiction of truth, the truth of fiction

My interview in Wave Magazine, Nepal's youth magazine. _________________________________________________________ Guff-suff With Sushma Joshi In numerology, Sushma means inspiring, intuitive, and creative. These characters define Sushma Joshi, writer of a collection of short stories entitled The End of the World. She talked to Wave about her fascination with Paul, the future telling Octopus . FROM ISSUE # 176 (August 2010) | PHOTO SEBASTIAN MEYER/GRAPHICS WAVE Who do you write for: you or your readers? I write because the story begs to be told. I don't think about myself or the readers. How do you choose the names for your characters? Sometimes I take them from myths, sometimes newspapers. What is the most hurtful thing people have said to you? I can't remember now, so they can't have been that hurtful. Wh...

‘I Woke Up Last Night and I Cried ’ by Sushma Joshi (Nepal)

– Interview with Sushma Joshi by Voicu Mihnea Simadan 24/08/2010 Sushma Joshi is a Nepali writer and filmmaker who was born in 1973 in Kathmandu. She has published The End of the World (2008), a collection of short stories, Art Matters (2008), a books of essays about contemporary art, and New Nepal, New Voices (co-editor, 2009), a selection of articles. In this interview she talks about her books, writing, Nepal and her future trip to Thailand. Mihnea Voicu Simandan: Your collection of short stories, The End of the World , has quite a few references to politics, especially the Maoist struggle for power. What is the relationship between fiction and politics? Sushma Joshi : Politics can be an incomprehensible beast. How better to describe the complexities of the cotemporary moment than through fiction? MVS: Your concern with injustice and the tough life of poor Nepalese is an obvious theme in The End of the World . Does literat...

Il nano che mi serve il piatto di zuppa così bollente da infuocarmi le guance e riscaldarmi il cuore, è basso e tarchiato, con un ampio sorriso benevolo. La tovaglia è di cotone, a quadretti rossi e gialli. Il tavolo è coperto di oggetti di vetro, sembra la bottega di un farmacista. Il giallo dell’olio d’oliva e il rosso dell’aceto brillano lucenti dentro eleganti bottiglie. Bicchieri da vino di differenti fogge e misure stanno l’uno accanto all’altro. Tovaglioli color giallo sole giacciono arrotolati tra le pieghe dei loro contenitori in legno. “Roma! Roma!” Il cameriere si mostra impaziente mentre cerco di scoprire di più sulle origini di quest’allettante zuppa. “Genova? Sardegna?” Dal brodo spesso sale del vapore.   El Ghibli's archives show my story in both English and Italian . You can still read the archived story here at Wattpad: http://www.wattpad.com/3441671-un-piatto-di-zuppa-di-sushma-joshi

My story is now out in Mascara Literary Review in Australia. Check it out!

A bowl of zuppa sushma josh The dwarf who serves me the bowl of heart-warming, cheek-blushingly hot bowl of zuppa on that cold winter’s evening is short and squat, with a warm, stretched-out smile. The cloth on the table is cotton, checked with red and yellow. The tabletop is filled with glassware, like an apothecary’s shop. Olive oil and vinegar sparkle with red and yellow clarity inside elegant bottles. Wine glasses in different shapes and sizes stand side by side. Sunshine-yellow napkins nestle in the rounded depths of wooden holders. My travel memoir about my visit to Roma was published in El-Ghibli's  Anno 7, Numero 28 issue  on June 2010.  The story is now archived in Wattpad, here. http://www.wattpad.com/3441397-a-bowl-of-zuppa

ECS Review New Nepal, New Voices... new writers, new ideas, great reading. That’s my first take on this book of short stories edited by two Kathmandu-based Nepali writers, Sushma Joshi and Ajit Baral, each of whom has an enviable background in the expressive arts. The anthology features 15 story tellers and all but one story takes place in Nepal, the exception being ‘The face of Carolyn Flint’, about the (fictional?) American acquaintance of a Nepali living in California. Most of the authors are Nepali, some with familiar names on the Nepalese writing scene (e.g., Manjushree Thapa, Sushma Joshi, Sanjeev Uprety and others). Two are long-term Nepal-resident expats (Greta Rana and Wayne Amtzis). Maybe some of the authors use pseudonyms. That’s okay, for talent does not stop with one’s name, or nationality, or political persuasion. Art is universal, as this collection clearly demonstrates. In this moment of tremendous change and great hope for Nepal (yet to be fully real...

About a year ago, I got an email from Mike Ashley. Would I, he enquired, give him permission to reprint my story "The End of the World" in an anthology about apocalyptic fiction? Sure, I said. The idea of being published in an apocalyptic anthology thrilled me (as those of you who know me knew it would). And so here it is: The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic Sci-Fi, at #393 in the Amazon.com ranking in the UK, which is not a ranking to sneeze at at all. Even if you have just been dosed with Anthrax. The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF The last sixty years have been full of stories of one or other possible Armageddon, whether by nuclear war, plague, cosmic catastrophe or, more recently, global warming, terrorism, genetic engineering, AIDS and other pandemics. These stories, both pre- and post-apocalyptic, describe the fall of civilization, the destruction of the entire Earth, or the end of the Universe itself. Many of the stories reflect on humankind's infinite capacity for sel...

PRIMARY COLORS The sun hot and drowsy, the mat with the faint musky fragrance of new straw scratching under my skin. My grandmother, slowly peeling the membrane of an orange and popping them in my unresisting mouth. I am absorbed, absorbed in my playmate Parvati, a strawdust stuffed rag doll slightly taller than me. I try pushing little orange bits in her mouth too, but they just fall on the ground, squelching on the clean ochre straw, getting coated with a layer of white powdery dust of the ground. It is warm and drowsy, and the hum of bees is in the air.Then red silk everywhere, and glittering sequins. A wedding. My mother is carryi ng me. There is loud music and laughter, and the air is weighed down with the heavy smell of perfume, tears and turmeric. Turmeric mixed with cream, and rubbed on the soft white body of the bride. And I am crying, my tears loud as my inarticulateness. My mother gets angry at me, because I am incapable of explaining with my two year old vocabulary that the...

REPUBLICA KATHMANDU, April 19: I was one of the panel of judges for the sixth VOW Top 10 Women Competition. I was a judge for graduate level students. Singer Robin Sharma and businesswoman Seema Golccha were also on the same panel. The final 10 winners were awarded prizes at a ceremony held at the Hotel Radisson in Lazimpat on Sunday.

  My short story "Cheese" has been read: 总点击数：6322 times in Chinese literary website Rongshuxia.

  My story "The End of the World" has been read: 总点击数：5549 times in Chinese literary website rongshuxia. http://www.rongshuxia.com/book/5046892.html

I eat god, I drink god, I sleep on god... I eat god, I drink god, I sleep on god… It is the first day of the Jaipur Literature Festival and Girish Karnad, who is supposed to give the keynote lecture, along with heavyweights like Wole Soyinka and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., are missing in action. They are possibly lost in the Delhi fog, or the traffic, or maybe they didn’t even depart their home cities and countries in the first place. The roads, you know, says one of the organizers. Apparently this is a good enough explanation and the crowd asks no questions and asks for no explanations—we start off the day with a remarkably serene and unhurried shift to readings of Kabir instead. The day is beautiful, the sky is blue, there are long runners in pink, yellow and orange fabrics above our head and two dhol-players are causing a tremendous ruckus and making us all feel invigorated. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is on stage and goes from Kabir to Arun Kolatkar with effortless ease. And...