Sunny Singh | |
|---|---|
 Singh in 2023 | |
| Born | 20 May 1969 Varanasi, India |
| Alma mater | Brandeis University Jawaharlal Nehru University University of Barcelona |
| Occupation(s) | Academic and writer |
| Known for | Co-founder of the Jhalak Prize |
Sunny Singh FRSL (born 20 May 1969) is an Indian-born academic and writer of fiction and creative non-fiction. She is Professor of Creative Writing and Inclusion in the Arts at London Metropolitan University.
Sunny Singh was born in Varanasi, India. Her father's work with the government meant that the family regularly moved, living in cantonments and outposts including Dehradun, Dibrugarh, Along and Teju. The family also followed her father's assignments abroad, living in Pakistan, [1] the United States and Namibia.
Singh attended Brandeis University, where she majored in English and American Literature. She holds a master's degree in Spanish Language, Literature and Culture from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a PhD from the University of Barcelona, Spain. [2]
Singh worked as a journalist and management executive in Mexico, Chile, and South Africa, before returning to India in 1995 to focus on writing. She worked as a freelance writer and journalist until 2002 in New Delhi, publishing her first two books in that period. She moved to Barcelona in 2002 to work on her PhD and published her second novel in 2006.
Before her appointment as Professor in 2020, Singh was Senior Lecturer and Course Leader in Creative Writing at the London Metropolitan University. [3]
Singh was the Chairperson of the Authors' Club for some years. In 2016, Singh co-founded the Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour. The award supports British writers with a one-thousand pound prize. It was initiated by Singh, Nikesh Shukla and Media Diversified, with support from The Authors' Club, an anonymous donor, and the Jhalak Foundation [4] which is owned by Singh's family and named after her grandmother. [5] In 2020, a sister award, the Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize, was founded.
Singh wrote in Twitter in 2020: "I get regular invites to debate on various platforms. I always say no. Because debate is an imperialist capitalist white supremacist cis heteropatriarchal technique that transforms a potential exchange of knowledge into a tool of exclusion & oppression.” [6] [7]
In 2021, Singh, along with Monisha Rajesh and Chimene Suleyman, received racist abuse on social media as a result of raising concerns about depictions of autism and of students of colour in Kate Clanchy's book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. [8]
In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. [9]
Singh has published three novels, three non-fiction books and numerous short stories and essays.
Singh's debut novel, Nani's Book of Suicides, won the Mar De Letras Prize in Spain in 2003. [10] Her novel, Hotel Arcadia, was published by Quartet Books. Her latest book, A Bollywood State of Mind, was published on 19 October 2023 by Footnote Press (part of Bonnier Books [11]
Singh lives in London.
Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren was a Swedish writer of fiction and screenplays. She is best known for several children's book series, featuring Pippi Longstocking, Emil of Lönneberga, Karlsson-on-the-Roof, and the Six Bullerby Children, and for the children's fantasy novels Mio, My Son; Ronia the Robber's Daughter; and The Brothers Lionheart. Lindgren worked on the Children's Literature Editorial Board at the Rabén & Sjögren publishing house in Stockholm and wrote more than 30 books for children. In 2017, she was calculated to be the world's 18th most translated author. Lindgren had by 2010 sold roughly 167 million books worldwide. In 1994, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "her unique authorship dedicated to the rights of children and respect for their individuality". Her opposition to corporal punishment of children resulted in the world's first law on the matter in 1979, while her campaigning for animal welfare led to a new law, Lex Lindgren, in time for her 80th birthday.
Yōko Tawada is a Japanese writer currently living in Berlin, Germany. She writes in both Japanese and German. She is a former writer-in-residence at MIT and Stanford University.
Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual. She is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland. She was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Polish female prose writer for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life". For her novel Flights, Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. Her works include Primeval and Other Times, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and The Books of Jacob.
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was released in 1985. She went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a personal memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces.
Peepal Tree Press is a publisher based in Leeds, England which publishes Caribbean, Black British, and South Asian fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and academic books. Poet Kwame Dawes has said, "Peepal Tree Press's position as the leading publisher of Caribbean literature, and especially of Caribbean poetry, is unassailable."
Catherine Johnson FRSL is a British author and screenwriter. She has written several young adult novels and co-wrote the screenplay for the 2004 drama film Bullet Boy.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Kate Clanchy MBE is a British poet, freelance writer and teacher.
Aminatta Forna is a British writer of Scottish and Sierra Leonean ancestry. Her first book was a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest (2002). Since then she has written four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). In 2021 she published a collection of essays, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion. (2021), which was a new genre for her.
Leone Ross FRSL is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Jacob Ross FRSL is a Grenada-born poet, playwright, journalist, novelist and creative writing tutor, based in the UK since 1984.
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan-British novelist and short story writer. Her doctoral novel, The Kintu Saga, was shortlisted and won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013. It was published by Kwani Trust in 2014 under the title Kintu. Her short story collection, Manchester Happened, was published in 2019. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story "Let's Tell This Story Properly", and emerged Regional Winner, Africa region. She was the Overall Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She was longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. In 2018, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize in the fiction category. In 2021, her novel The First Woman won the Jhalak Prize.
John Clanchy is an Australian novelist and short story writer.
Patrice Lawrence MBE, FRSL is a British writer and journalist, who has published fiction both for adults and children. Her writing has won awards including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize for Older Children and The Bookseller YA Book Prize. In 2021, she won the Jhalak Prize's inaugural children's and young adult category for her book Eight Pieces of Silva (2020).
The Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour is an annual literary prize awarded to British or British-resident BAME writers. £1,000 is awarded to the sole winner.
Onjali Qatara Raúf is a British author and the founder of the two NGOs: Making Herstory, a woman's rights organisation tackling the abuse and trafficking of women and girls in the UK; and O's Refugee Aid Team, which raises awareness and funds to support refugee frontline aid organisations.
Irenosen Iseghohi Okojie FRSL is a Nigerian-born novelist and short-story writer working in London, England. Her stories incorporate speculative elements and also make use of her West African heritage. Her first novel, Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask Award in 2016, and her story "Grace Jones" won the 2020 Caine Prize for African Writing. Okojie was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) in 2018, and in 2020 was appointed a vice-chair of the RSL.
Chimene or ChimèneSuleyman is a writer from London of Turkish Cypriot descent, who has written on the politics of race and immigration in media including The Guardian, The Independent, the BBC and NPR, and co-edited The Good Immigrant USA in 2019.
Preti Taneja FRSL is a British writer, screenwriter and educator. She is currently professor of world literature and creative writing at Newcastle University. Her first novel, We That Are Young, won the Desmond Elliott Prize and was shortlisted for several awards, including the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Prix Jan Michalski, and the Shakti Bhatt Prize. In 2005, a film she co-wrote was shortlisted for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Taneja's second book, Aftermath, is an account of the 2019 London Bridge terror attack, and describes her knowledge of the victims, as well as her experience having previously taught the perpetrator of the attacks in a prison education programme. It won the Gordon Burn Prize for 2022.
The Bone Readers is a 2016 novel by Grenadan British author Jacob Ross, the second in his "Camaho Quartet." In 2017, it won the inaugural Jhalak Prize. In 2022, The Bone Readers was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
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