The first UEA India eight-day workshop in prose fiction took place in Calcutta in March 2013, and the third one began on 3rd April 2014. The second workshop was in non-fiction, and was held in July 2013. It’s the first time that the UEA workshop has travelled out of the United Kingdom, and its aim is to nurture and guide, for a short, intense period of creativity, conversation, and critical discussion, writers from all over the world who have a potential for excellence.
I’ve been lucky to have terrific writers teaching on the course with me each time: Romesh Gunesekera, Patrick French, and Kirsty Gunn – some of the best practitioners of the craft. And we’ve been lucky to have, for each workshop, an amazingly diverse and talented group of students, many of whom have arrived in Calcutta not only from various parts of India, but from different parts of the world (the UK, the US, Bangladesh).
To mark this new venture for the university, newwriting.net is showcasing a very small selection of the works that were written for and discussed during that first workshop in March, 2013, via a new ‘UEA India’ menu item. Our aim is to continue to add to the really interesting material that the workshops have thrown up, and to continue to showcase that work here.