Journalist Anu Singh Chaudhary‘s book “Neela Scarf,” or The Blue Scarf, is a collection of stories depicting life in different parts and among different social classes in India. She speaks to Women Talk Online about writing about class differences and intimacy in her mother tongue, Hindi.

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Meena Kandasamy leaves no stone unturned when she wants to express herself. Probably that’s the reason why her anger and her angst reveal themselves in her poetry through her “dark and dangerous” language.  Meena’s poem, “Nailed”  from her book “Ms. Militancy” is a good example.

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“They use us when they need us.” During the 20-minute-interview with Salma and while watching the hour-long documentary on her life, this one sentence kept haunting me.

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Meena Kandasamy is an upcoming poet based in Chennai in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. She writes on women’s themes and on the Dalits, member of the lower castes in India. Her poetry collection is called ‘Touch.” She spoke to DW blogger Roma Rajpal on being a poet and her passion for writing.

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Anjum Hasan is a young Indian writer who won the Man Literary Prize in 2009 for her book “Neti, Neti”. Her latest book “Difficult Pleasures” has been listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. “Difficult Pleasures” is a collection of short stories in the form of a montage of characters who go about their busy lives in big, anonymous metropolitan cities – Mumbai,Bangalore,Calcutta. Anjum Hasan casts a spell on these characters and they bare their deepest, darkest emotions to the readers. There is rebellion and disappointment, love and melancholy and the reader experiences the intimate emotions of her characters. Hasan delves into the emotional spaces of the characters and bares all without any inhibitions leaving one with more questions than one had bargained for. 

DW’s WomenTalkOnline had the opportunity to speak to her:

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