The Fiction of truth, the truth of fiction

You can now listen to ten minutes of my story "Cheese" online. Here is the link on Podomatic. Let me know what you think!: http://sushma.podomatic.com/entry/2011-11-29T05_15_49-08_00

I found my story "Law and Order " had been discussed in a college paper titled  "Identity and Authenticity in George Orwell’s  Burmese Days : The Pukka Sahib Englishman in British Colonial Burma" by Patti Fish Stephens of Ursuline college.  Please find the link below-reading it may inspire teachers to use my short story in teaching the same issues. Here is a description of the Quill, where this paper was published: " Named in honor of the now-defunct campus newspaper,  The Quill  is a showcase for student academic writing.  It features student writing that has been nominated as worthy of distinction by instructors.  By making public examples of the fine student writing produced at Ursuline, we hope to inspire more excellence in future student writing. "     Here is the link to the Quill and to the paper:  http://www.ursuline.edu/academics/quill.cfm

I will be in Oxford in July 2012 to talk about my writings on the Nepali diaspora in Thailand and Myanmar. I traveled around those two countries last year as an Asia Fellow, with support from the Asian Scholarship Foundation. (Here's the Asia Fellows from 2010-2011. I am on the far left. If I look fat, its because I was eating too much Thai food!) My aim is to write a book like Tiziano Terzani's "The Fortune-teller Told Me".  All my friends who like to mock my fascination with astrology, fortune-telling and prophesizing the future--please read this book! It is possible to be a journalist for a publication as serious as Der Speigel, do excellent reportage and still weave these fascinating tidbids into your book, as Terzani did. If you have a literature related group in Oxford or London and want me to come and read from my book(s), contact me at: sansarmagazine@gmail.com. I haven't been in the UK since 1995--I'm looking forward to this visit...

Look at the gorgeous Istanbul Literary Review. Don't you just wish you were in Istanbul! They published my "A Bowl of Zuppa" in their May 2011 issue. A BOWL OF ZUPPA Sushma Joshi The dwarf who serves me the bowl of heartwarming, 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. “Roma! Roma!” The waiter is impatient as I try to dig further into the heritage of this tantalizing zuppa—Genoa? Sardegna? The steam rises from the thick broth. Who’s the cook? I ask, as if I can extract the recipe by finding out the exact identity of the person who put...

World Literature Today just sent me the new link where they had put my story "The Little Girl Who Died." They have a new website and some of the links were broken. So you can read it in FIRST WORDS  here .