Called “top author” on British TV, I chat about my versatility workshop for Nottingham Writers’ Studio on 30 Jan and new book with HarperCollins
Category Archives: News
Join me Saturday 30 January 2021 for a workshop that helps writers expand their range?
This special one-off workshop brought to you by award-winning author, Shreya Sen-Handley has been designed to help writers realise the range of creative writing they are capable of doing and guide them on the road to expanding their repertoire.
Writers, like actors, can get typecast. But the ability to write in a range of formats, genres and styles not only means further opportunities to be published and read, but to grow as a writer, push boundaries, and enjoy our calling more. It means realising our full potential as writers, and as individuals too. This workshop will help you realise how versatile you are and guide you in expanding your repertoire.
About Shreya
Shreya Sen-Handley is the author of two books with HarperCollins, ‘Strange’, modern tales of the unexpected, and the award-winning ‘Memoirs of My Body’. A librettist for the Welsh National Opera, their multicultural opera ‘Migrations’ will go on tour in the UK next year. Shreya is also a columnist for the international media, writing for the National Geographic, CNN, The Guardian, and more, a creative writing teacher for British universities and other institutions, and an illustrator. Her short stories have been published, broadcast, and shortlisted for prizes in Britain, India and Australia. Her poetry, published, broadcast and performed in Britain and India, has spearheaded a British national campaign against hate crimes. She is currently working on a new Welsh National Opera production ‘Creating Change’, and writing her third book for HarperCollins, ‘The Accidental Tourist’.
Please click on pic for details.
In more classical music news…
In classical music news, in which I never expected to be…
News of our Welsh National Opera short films in top music magazine!
Interview with Britain’s Best Independent Bookstore
I really enjoyed my interview with Britain’s Best Independent Bookstore Five Leaves Bookshop (national and regional winner several years in a row) which premiered last night. I got to yak about life and sleep and children and buses and travel and opera and books with poet and publisher Pippa Hennessy. And about growing older and growing up…
Shreya Sen-Handley’s Strange Will Leave You Haunted: Popular Women’s Channel SheThePeople
An excerpt from the book, Strange by Shreya Sen-Handley...
“Huh?’ barked the policeman who’d originally interrogated old Jay, almost apoplectic. ‘So, he’s been slipping you songs and not body parts? He lured you into dingy carparks to ply you with music, not drugs, and NOT sex?’ The youngest of the children looked at the policeman horrified that he had said the S word. Hadn’t the same man lectured them two weeks ago about avoiding pervs? The kids had never imagined that was why everyone was making such a fuss. The very utterance of the scary word, however, caused a seismic shift in the room. The focus of everyone’s distaste shifted to their bungling police force that had handled the case so badly. The parents announced that they were dropping charges. They would communicate that to the missing family too, that of the girl who’d been sick since the incident. They were confident the latter would go along happily. Back to being perfect, untampered families, they felt bad about having put the misunderstood man through the rigours of arrest and incarceration, even though they didn’t like his clothes, his taste in music, or the fact that he was taking money, however small (since they hadn’t noticed any missing), off their kids. They wondered if they should invite the unfortunate fellow to dinner. They had heard he had once been one of them, with a picket fenced home and a white-collar job in IT. His wife had left him apparently, taking their children with her in an acrimonious split, and it had all fallen apart for him. Perhaps if they embraced him to the bosom of good society again, he might cease and desist from his minor crimes…” Please click on image to read the rest of this excerpt from the short story ”Beyoncé and Jay-ji’ in ‘Strange’, HarperCollins, 2019.
University of Leicester’s Creative Writing spotlight on ‘Strange’
“Former television journalist and producer for CNBC and MTV, and East India head for Australasian Channel [V], Shreya Sen-Handley is the author of two books with HarperCollins, the recently published short story collection Strange, and the award-winning Memoirs of My Body, published in 2017. A librettist for the Welsh National Opera, the first South Asian woman to have written an international opera according to the international press, their multicultural opera Migrations will go on tour in the UK in 2021. Shreya is also a columnist for the international media, writing for the National Geographic, CNN, The Hindu, Times of India, The Guardian, and more, a creative writing teacher for British universities and other institutions, and an illustrator for Hachette, HarperCollins, Welsh National Opera, Arts Council England, and Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature. Her short stories have been published, broadcast, and shortlisted for prizes in Britain, India and Australia. This year she wrote her first ever poems, which went on to be published and broadcast in Britain and India, as well as spearheading a British national campaign against hate crimes. She is currently working on a new Welsh National Opera production Creating Change in which she combines poetry and illustration, and writing her third book for HarperCollins, the travelogue The Accidental Tourist, alongside her monthly column for top Asian newspapers The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle.”
Please click on image to read an excerpt from ‘Strange’, HarperCollins, 2019.
Best Independent British Bookstore interviews me as part of their British author series, premiere on 29th September
The Best Independent British Bookstore of 2018 (and regional winner before and after), Five Leaves Bookshop, interviewed me this week as part of a new online series on British authors. It was a wonderful half-hour chatting and laughing with the amazing Pippa Hennessy who plays a pivotal role for literature in the region, spearheading the campaign that brought Nottingham its UNESCO City of Literature status. In the course of the interview, I was asked to read from my HarperCollins collection of modern tales of the unexpected, ‘Strange’, and judging by the broad smile on Pippa’s face, it went down well. Please do watch the interview when it premieres on September 29th, and all the other fabulous interviews that are already out. Here, in the meantime, is a picture of us with Henry Normal, the BAFTA winning creator of popular British sitcoms like ‘The Royle Family’ and ‘Alan Partridge’, Oscar-nominated film ‘Philomena’ starring Judi Dench, and more, on a panel discussing writing. Henry Normal is another of the authors interviewed in the Five Leaves series. Please click on the pic to know more.
‘Strange’ features in Times of India article about women writers of horror/crime/supernatural and the special insight they bring to it
“Like many women, I have known psychological, sexual and physical abuse. The knowledge of what goes on in our ‘everyday’ lives beneath the unruffled surface that patriarchal society forces us to maintain is key to why women write horror, crime, and the supernatural so often and so well. We not only know what lies beneath, we have learnt to cope with it, gently and silently building up to a startling dénouement, both in our lives and our fiction.” says Sen-Handley…
Please click on the picture to read more.
