About Me

Teaching

I have an MA in Creative Writing and taught on the Certificate in Creative Writing at Sussex University for ten years. I also worked as a Lecturer in Creative Writing on the MA at Brighton University and taught on the Creative Writing Programme in Brighton. I am a member of Writers Mosaic, a branch of the Royal Literary Fund, and am currently a Reading Round Lector for the RLF. I also run a writing class in Newhaven, East Sussex and offer a mentoring service for writers (see my Writing Clinic page).

I grew up in India and, as a result of that and my mixed heritage Indian-British heritage, I feel I have an outside perspective into both cultures, an ability to see things that many people take for granted from different points of view. Being an outsider is a useful gift for a writer, and for many different reasons most writers do feel like outsiders. Writing is really about ways of seeing, and every writer needs to find their own angle and their own identity. The search for belonging has motivated much of my own writing.

I am also an oral storyteller. Telling (rather than reading) a story, means that you have to reduce it to its basic structural components and then improvise around it to suit your time slot and your audience. It’s a fantastic training in focusing on structure and theme, on the use of metaphor and sensory detail, and of course on bringing your characters alive – all essential components of good writing. In 2014 I was part of a delegation of writers, poets and storytellers who visited St Lucia in the Caribbean to run workshops as part of the Fringe St Lucia Festival now twinned with the Brighton Fringe Festival.