Rochelle Potkar | |
|---|---|
| Born | Rochelle Potkar Kalyan, Maharashtra, India |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Alma mater | La Trobe University, Australia |
| Genre | Fiction, poetry, short story |
| Notable works | The Arithmetic of Breasts & Other Stories Four Degrees of Separation Paper Asylum Bombay Hangovers |
| Website | |
| rochellepotkar | |
Rochelle Potkar is an Indian fiction writer and poet based in Mumbai, India. Her work includes the short story collections The Arithmetic of Breasts and Other Stories and Bombay Hangovers, as well as the poetry collections Four Degrees of Separation and Paper Asylum.
She was a writer-in-residence in the 2015 Fall residency at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, and the Charles Wallace Writer's fellow at the University of Stirling, Scotland in 2016-17. She is the founder of the Arcs-of-a-Circle artists' residency program. [1]
Rochelle Potkar was born in Kalyan to Goan parents. [2] [1] She moved to Mumbai in 1998. [2] She completed a college degree in commerce and a post-graduate degree in advertising [3] from Wigan and Leigh College, Mahalaxmi.[ citation needed ] She completed an MBA from La Trobe University, Australia. [1]
Her short stories and poems have been published in books, journals, and anthologies. [4] [5] She wrote her first short story, "Matamorphosis of Joe Pereira" after she moved from Kaylan to Mumbai, and also wrote poetry about her transition to the city during that time. [3] After visiting the Tapi estuary at Surat in 2007 and then attending her first fiction-writing workshop, she wrote the story "Tropical Estuary." [5] In 2013, she participated in a Tall Tales project storytelling event, and shared a story from her personal experience. [6] [7] Her first book of short fiction, The Arithmetic of Breasts and Other Stories, was published in 2014 and shortlisted for The Digital Book of the Year Award 2014, by Publishing Next, Goa. [8] [9] In 2014, she was one of the founders of Cappuccino Readings (CR), which organized a series of poetry readings at a Starbucks in Horniman Circle in Mumbai. [10] [11] Around this time, she also participated in Poetry Couture, an association formed by Raghavendra Madhu to promote poetry readings in India, [12] and was co-editor of Neesah Magazine. [13]
In 2015, she was selected to participate as a writer-in-residence in the 2015 Fall residency program of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. [14] [15] [16] In a January 2016 interview, she discussed elements of realism and magic realism in her work, and said her writing is influenced by Haruki Murakami. [17]
Her first book of poetry, Four Degrees of Separation, was published in 2016, and includes poetry written during her transition to Mumbai. [3] [18] In 2016, two of her poems, "Biscooti Love" and "Knotted Inside Me", were included in the anthology 40 under 40: an Anthology of Post-Globalization Poetry. [19]
She was the 2016-2017 Charles Wallace Writer's fellow at the University of Stirling, Scotland. [20] [21] In 2017, she founded the Arcs-of-a-Circle Artists' Residency in Mumbai, and organized its first ten-day event for 12 artists in December 2017 with funding support from the US Consulate, Mumbai. [1] In 2017 and 2018, she contributed to the Joao Roque Literary Journal as the poetry editor. [22]
Rochelle practices and promotes the Japanese short poetry form haibun through workshops. [1] [23] In 2018, she published a collection of haibun, Paper Asylum. [24] [25]
In 2018, a poem she wrote during her Iowa residency, Skirt, was adapted into a poetry film by Philippa Collie Cousins for the Visible Poetry Project. [26] [27]
She co-edited the 2018 Goan-Irish anthology, Goa: A Garland of Poems, with Gabriel Rosenstock. [28] Her collection of short stories, Bombay Hangovers, was published in 2021. Her short story "Honour" was included in The Punch Magazine’s Anthology of New Writing: Select Short Stories by Women Writers, also published in 2021. [29]
Rochelle debuted in a character role in the Tamil feature-length film, Taramani , directed by Ram. [30] [31]
Dame Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, and her term expired in 2019. She was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.
Dominic Francis Moraes was an Indian writer and poet who published nearly 30 books in English. He is widely seen as a foundational figure in Indian English literature. His poems are a meaningful and substantial contribution to Indian and World literature.
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Sheila E. Murphy is an American text and visual poet who has been writing and publishing since 1978. She is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. Green Integer Press. 2003. Murphy was awarded the Hay(na)ku Poetry Book Prize from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland) in 2017 for her book Reporting Live from You Know Where. 2018. She currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
Ranjit Hoskote is an Indian poet, art critic, cultural theorist and independent curator. He has been honoured by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award and the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation. In 2022, Hoskote received the 7th JLF-Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry.
Eunice de Souza was an Indian English language poet, literary critic and novelist. Among her notable books of poetry are Women in Dutch painting (1988), Ways of Belonging (1990), Nine Indian Women Poets (1997), These My Words (2012), and Learn From The Almond Leaf (2016). She published two novels, Dangerlok (2001), and Dev & SImran (2003), and was also the editor of a number of anthologies on poetry, folktales, and literary criticism.
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Jerry Pinto is a Mumbai-based Indian-English poet, novelist, short story writer, translator, as well as journalist. Pinto's works include Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb (2006), which won the Best Book on Cinema Award at the 54th National Film Awards, Surviving Women (2000) and Asylum and Other Poems (2003). His first novel Em and the Big Hoom was published in 2012. Pinto won the Windham-Campbell prize in 2016 for his fiction. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2016 for his novel Em and the Big Hoom.
Jeet Thayil is an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He is the author of several poetry collections, including These Errors Are Correct (2008), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award. His first novel, Narcopolis, (2012), won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and The Hindu Literary Prize.
K. Srilata is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and academic based in Chennai. Her poem, In Santa Cruz, Diagnosed Home Sick won the First Prize in the All India Poetry Competition in 1998. She has also been awarded the Unisun British Council Poetry Award (2007) and the Charles Wallace writing residency at the University of Sterling (2010). Her debut novel Table for Four was long-listed in 2009 for the Man Asian Literary Prize and released in 2011.
Annie Zaidi is an English-language writer from India. Her novel, Prelude To A Riot, won the Tata Literature Live! Awards for Book of the Year 2020. In 2019, she won The Nine Dots Prize for her work Bread, Cement, Cactus and in 2018 she won The Hindu Playwright Award for her play, Untitled-1. Her non-fiction debut, a collection of essays, Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales, was short-listed for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2010.
Goa is India's smallest state on the west coast, and its writers have written in many diverse languages. Poetry is a small and scattered field in the region, and this page makes an attempt to acknowledge those who have contributed to the field. It includes those listed below who have contributed to poetry in and from Goa, as well as those writing poetry in Goa. Poetry related to Goa is known to have been written in Konkani, in Portuguese, English and Marathi, apart from other regional, national and international languages to a lesser extent.
Vihang A. Naik or Vihang Ashokbhai Naik is a modern bilingual poet from Gujarat, India. He has authored many collections of poetry in English and Gujarati, besides translating poems from Gujarati into English. He died in the year 2021.
Adil Jehangir Jussawalla is an Indian poet, magazine editor and translator. He has written two books of poetry, Land's End and Missing Person.
Priya Sarukkai Chabria is an Indian poet, translator and novelist writing in English, and a curator. She has written four poetry collections, two speculative fiction novels, translations from Classical Tamil, literary nonfiction, and a novel. She has edited two poetry anthologies. She is also founding editor of Poetry at Sangam, an Indian online literary journal of poetry.
Jyotsna Milan was an Indian novelist, short story writer, poet and editor. She published two novels, several short story collections and two collections of poetry, and wrote in both Gujarati and Hindi.
We travel from Kashmir to Mumbai as Rochelle Potkar introduces us to Purana, a washerwoman, and her struggle to keep herself alive while discharging her familial responsibilities. Written poetically, the story touches you: Potkar is not only an accomplished poet but she can do wonders with fiction too.
Rochelle Potkar's Honour uses a fitting metaphor for the sorry tale of a washerwoman from the Dhobi Ghat of central Mumbai, battling the odds of life.
Rochelle Patkar's competent pen takes us down the slippery pathways of Mahalaxmi's (in) famous dhobi ghat, the gradual chill in the bones having all to do with the unfurling of events thereafter.
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