Category: Writing Life
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On Reading Anandmath and Writing Harmony
Vande Mataram. A truly powerful and pivotal speech for Mother India. As a poet and writer, this is a praise of the highest form for any work of kavya. The story of a nation, its struggle, hopes and dreams. 🇮🇳🙏https://t.co/xKI4MyhaUi — Salik Shah ✨🚀 (@salik) November 7, 2025 Yesterday, I watched Prime Minister Narendra Modi…
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Akhand Saga: Progress Report
After eight months of intensive rewriting, rethinking, and rebuilding, I’ve submitted the revised manuscript for the first book of the Akhand Saga to an amazing agent and editorial team. What began as an answer to their March feedback has transformed into something far more ambitious—and far more demanding—than I initially imagined. Harmony is an anti-colonial, genre-bending science fantasy…
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After Star Trek: Inner Light | Little Blue Marble – Climate Fiction for a Changing World
Signed the contract for my poem “After Star Trek: Inner Light.” It took three years for the poem to write itself in its current form, and now it’ll appear in the gorgeous Little Blue Marble, edited and published by Katrina Archer from Canada. Like the title episode of Star Trek (which is certainly an all-time…
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Poetry: “A Personal Index of Our Times” (Strange Horizons, January 2022)
My poem “A Personal Index of Our Times” is up here on Strange Horizons (January 2022). “Salik Shah offers an abcedarium of the jinn for our global village in ‘A Personal Index of Our Times.’” — Strange Horizons Many thanks to Bogi Takács (eir bio reads: Lamda + Hugo winner) for a glowing review: Vijayalakshmi…
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Notes from Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by David Gerrold
So I finally managed to get through David Gerrold’s short but excellent guide to writing science fiction and fantasy: Worlds of Wonders (Writers Digest Books, 2001) / Amazon. The whole book is bookmark-worthy. Here are three excerpts: Focus on clarity. Concentrate on precision. The single most important lesson of effective communication is this: Focus on…
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Interview: “Shambhala,” Tibet, and Mithila Review
Photograph: My workstation around 2015 at the time of writing “Shambhala.” Here is my interview with Juggernaut Books, which published “Shambhala” as part of a science fiction series edited by Indrapramit Das in 2016: Do you write everyday? Where and when do you write? Writing is thinking through small and hard problems for me; being…
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“Shambhala” – The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction Volume 2 (Hachette, 2021)
A childhood dream comes true: my fiction debut in print! I am so excited and humbled to announce that my short story, “Shambhala,” appears in The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction Volume 2 now available from Amazon and leading Indian book stores. You can order the print edition here on Amazon (India). The…
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Indian Science Fiction: Patterns, History and Hybridity (New Dimensions in Science Fiction) – University of Wales Press, 2021
I am thrilled and humbled to see this first of significant books to come on Indian Science Fiction, which mentions the work of Mithila Review and Kalpabiswa, among others, and also cites my article on the Indian SF: Indian Science Fiction: Patterns, History and Hybridity (New Dimensions in Science Fiction) by Suparno Banerjee – University…
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Writers of the Future Contest (2020)
My climate fiction story “The Architecture of Loss,” set in a near future where the Indian tectonic plate breaks apart, is now an Honorable Mention for the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest (2nd Quarter, 2020).
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New Book: The Story of India’s Partition
On July 8, 1947, Cyril Radcliffe arrived in India for the first time. He had five weeks and four judges to settle the boundary between the newly independent India and a newborn state of Pakistan. After drawing the “ Radcliffe Line,” the British officer burnt his papers, refused his fee, and left the wounded continent…