The Fiction of truth, the truth of fiction

My play "I Killed My Best Friend's Father" was accepted to the Kali TalkBack Festival in 2012 for dramaturg support. Caroline Jester worked with me to hone down the play, and provided excellent support. It was stage read at the Arcola Theatre with the rest of the other plays at the festival in December 2012 to a packed audience. Check out her website: http://carolinejester.com/dramaturgy.html

My short stories have been used by the educational system in Australia. In 2012, the Tasmanian Certificate of Education used my short story "Cheese" in their English as a Second Language External Assessment. Check out the exam here . URL: http://www.tqa.tas.gov.au/4DCGI/_WWW_doc/169895/RND01/ESL315109_Paper.pdf

Hi Sushma, I hope you're well. I just wanted to let you know that I thought the reading of 'I killed my best friend's father' was brilliant. Like your short stories, it was deceptively simple on the surface but explored some very hard-hitting themes. I really enjoyed meeting Rosamunde and seeing what she did with the play. When I heard about the two ghosts of the fathers - and the rather close to the bone humour - I thought to myself, 'goodness, is this going to actually work??' And, lo and behold, it did. So were you able to watch the whole thing on the live stream in KTM? How did you feel it went?  I thought that the way you wove the migration/ post-conflict theme into the play so seamlessly was really good. You will be interested to know that I brought someone along to see the play with me who had never been to Nepal and had no knowledge of the culture or recent history, and he was able to follow the play and engage with it without any problems, so it looks...

  Issue 12 ~ November 2012 Soft Things by Sushma Joshi “We are looking for some komal maal ,” Sailesh says. Sailesh, a journalist from the local newspaper, who’s been recruited to take us along and act as our guide in the redlight district. In the words of international journalism, he’s a fixer. And that’s precisely what he’s doing right now—asking for a soft thing with the casual inflection of a man used to asking for soft things. I don’t think he necessarily frequents child prostitutes. But his tone makes it abundantly clear that whatever we are after, he’s willing to procure for us—and if it’s a soft thing, he’ll get us a soft thing.  Click here to read the essay. Sushma Joshi is a writer and filmmaker from Nepal. Her book “The End of the World” was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. Her short film “The Escape” was accepted to the Berlinale Talent Campus. She has a BA from Brown University.        

Mascara Literary Review #12 is out! A message from the editors of Mascara Literary Review. We’re delighted to announce issue 12 of Mascara Literary Review , is now on line, edited by Michelle Cahill. Our featured poet is Mila Kačič Poetry by Brett Dionysius, Paul Kane, Christine Ratnasingham, Diane Fahey, Louise McKenna, Lyn Hatherley, Mani Rao, Jakob Ziguras, Tiffany Tsao, Jas Shenstone, Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, John Tranter, Ainslee Meredith, Grace V.S. Chin, Tim Grey, Dan Disney, Ravi Shankar, Vuong Pham, Mark Young, Judy Johnson Fiction Fikret Pajalic, Laura Woollett and Ankur Agarwal Creative Non-Fiction Sushma Joshi, Madeleine Slavick Interviews Toby Fitch interviews John Tranter Reviews   Martin Edmond reviews The Recluse by Evelyn Juers and Varamo translated by Chris Andrews Sunil Badami reviews Alien Shores Ed Sharon Rundle & Meenakshi Bharat Paul Giffard-Foret reviews The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash Jen Craig review...

  My short stories have found their way to school curricula and teaching syllabi worldwide. INDIA "The Prediction" is part of the  syllabus  for MA students at Shivaji University, India. SHIVAJI UNIVERSITY, KOLHAPUR Syllabus for M. A. English Programme (Choice Based Credit System with Internal Evaluation) To be introduced from June 2017 (for Regular Students) To be introduced from June 2018 (for Distance mode Students) http://www.unishivaji.ac.in/uploads/syllabus/Arts%20&%20Fine%20Arts/Syllabi%202017/English.pdf *** JAPAN In 2012, "Cheese" was used in an English speech contest held at St Mary College, in Japan, by Junior High School students. History of St Mary College St. Mary College, officially Nunoike Gaigo Senmon Gakko, was established in 1987, with the approval of the Aichi Prefectural government. According to Article 1 of the Japanese School Education Law, a Senmon Gakko is identified as a technical college not connected to a university...

My play is being stage read at the Arcola Theatre in London for the Kali TalkBack Theatre Festival at 3pm on December 8th, 2012. Please come, one and all!

NOTE: I wrote this story in the summer of 2002 or 2003, when I was living in 125th Street, Harlem. My friend Karine had an apartment there, and I was staying with her during the last part of my stay in New York. The tiger was reported to be only a few blocks away from where we were. It occurred to me that it was a little too close for comfort. I wrote this story and sent it to many publications, all of which unanimously rejected it.    MING'S DEFENSE SUSHMA JOSHI My name is Ming. I can't tell you why my owner named me Ming. I can only hazard a few intelligent guesses. In some blurry, peripatetic part of his brain, Alfred must have thought I came from China. Perhaps he thought I was descended from the Ming Dynasty. Who knows? Alfred, to put it kindly, is not the brightest of human beings. He watches too much television. In one of those channel hops, he must have seen two minutes of Ming Dynasty in the History Channel, and that episode about the great Dynasty...

Amparo was very upset about something. She was going on, in that passionate way, about an issue of great concern. She saw me looking at her and she realized I was clueless. “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?” she said.  I admitted I was clueless. “They have started to tinker with watches. Now people have to wear watches which show their gender-whether they are male or female, and their height as well!”  I was bemused. “Does it matter?” I asked.  “YES, IT DOES MATTER!” She said, in that inimitable Amparo way. “OF COURSE IT MATTERS. It is screwing with universal standards!”  Those who know Amparo know she yelled a lot, often in frustration, often at those who failed to understand the urgency of the situation. How urgent it was to have the same universal standards of rights, everywhere, everytime! What was my dream about? If Amparo was yelling at me from across the divide of Death, this was definitely something quite important. The clocks/watches, I ...

My story "I did not mean to sell you" is now available in Yomimono, edited by Suzanne Kamata and published from Japan. ____________________ Society of Writers, Editors and Translators|SWET May 26, 2012 Yomimono 16 Just Published Yomimono - 16 (Volume 16) [Paperback] New Japanese-based and expat writing from one of Japan's top literary publications. Contributors include Marcus Bird (Author), Jane Joritz-Nakagawa (Author), Yoko Danno (Author), David Galef (Author), Namita Hiro (Author), Sushma Joshi (Author), Jean Toyama (Author), Ayako Miura (Author), Suzanne Kamata (Author, Editor), Deborah Davidson (Translator), Michelle Zacharias (Cover Design) Published by CreateSpace May 24, 2012, now available in Japan from SWET Member  Suzanne Kamata , as well as  in the USA.

Work with my short story "The End of the World," as the English Action Center in Hanoi has done. Click here to get to the English Action Center!