Why one story is never enough, with Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro

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Why one story is never enough, with Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro

Art &
Culture

An exploration of something we all have a primal need for – stories, and lots of different kinds of them

Human beings have been telling stories for thousands of years, but what actually makes for a good story? Authors have been trying to settle on the great principles of compelling writing for as long as people have been writing. Yet, as Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro argue, something has gone amiss in these manuals on the art of storytelling: they have tended to privilege a Western perspective.

In April 2023 Anappara and Soomro came to Intelligence Squared to talk about their new anthology, Letters to a Writer of Colour, in which they ask us to critically examine the assumptions that shape the way we think fiction should be written. What might fiction look like if we considered alternative ways of constructing narratives that were grounded in the experiences of a person of colour?

Anappara and Soomro were in conversation with two of the contributors to the collection, Sharlene Teo and Leila Aboulela. Together they explored one of the things we all have a primal need for – stories, and lots of different kinds of them.

Speakers for the motion

Deepa Anappara

Author and co-editor of Letters to a Writer of Colour
Taymour Soomro

Author and co-editor of Letters to a Writer of Colour
Leila Aboulela

Author, essayist, playwright and contributor to the anthology Letters to a Writer of Colour
Sharlene Teo

Author and contributor to the anthology Letters to a Writer of Colour

Speakers are subject to change.

Speakers

Deepa Anappara

Author and co-editor of Letters to a Writer of Colour

Kerala-born author who worked as a journalist in India for eleven years. She is now an author and her debut novel Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line was named as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times. Most recently, she is the co-editor of Letters to a Writer of Colour, a collection of personal essays on fiction, race, and culture

Taymour Soomro

Author and co-editor of Letters to a Writer of Colour

Pakistani author and New Yorker contributor whose novel Other Names for Love was published by FSG in 2022. He is also co-editor, with Deepa Anappara, of Letters to a Writer of Colour, a collection of personal essays on fiction, race, and culture.

Leila Aboulela

Author, essayist, playwright and contributor to the anthology Letters to a Writer of Colour

Author, essayist, playwright of Sudanese origin based in Scotland. Her most popular novels are Minaret and The Translator, and her essays have been featured in publications such as Harper's Magazine, Granta, The Washington Post and The Guardian. She is a contributing writer in the 2023 anthology: Letters to a Writer of Colour. She is the first ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. She is the author of six novels, River Spirit, Bird Summons, The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the year, Minaret, and Lyrics Alley, which was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Her short story collection Elsewhere, Home, won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year. Leila’s work has been translated into fifteen languages and she was nominated three times for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction). She grew up in Khartoum and now lives in Aberdeen.

Sharlene Teo

Author and contributor to the anthology Letters to a Writer of Colour

Singaporean writer based in the UK. She is the winner of the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award for Ponti, her first novel. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Esquire UK, Magma Poetry, and Eunoia Review. She is a contributing writer in the 2023 anthology: Letters to a Writer of Colour.

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