Another article that received much praise, so if you’d like to read it too, Please click here
Image: The author looking glum, therefore appropriate!
Author, columnist and playwright Shreya Sen Handley hosts the second Beyond The Spectrum masterclass.
In the pandemic, Shreya discovered she was autistic. She’s written about it at the end of her third book, Times of India Best Nonfiction Book 2023 longlisted ‘Handle with Care’ (HarperCollins 2022), and her newspaper columns. Her play on the subject, ‘Quiet’, premiered at award-winning Tara Theatre in London, alongside new work by Hanif Kureishi, in 2021.
In this writing masterclass, Shreya explores how being Autistic gives her writing unique perspective and shares her best tips for aspiring novelists.
Please click here to watch
For the full (lighthearted, for these cold, dark months, and yet making a few points) article, please read here
(Image: Not in her pyjamas for a change))
Shreya’s last newspaper column of 2023, published on its last day, offers a (light-hearted) method of dealing with the misery of the year just gone! Please click here to read it in full.
Featuring Rahul Dravid, Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, toilet bowls and marathon men, the article captures (as the newspapers have put it) the ‘highs and hilarities of cricket’. Read here
(Image: At Trent Bridge with kids, taken by Stephen Handley)
Featuring in Scroll’s popular books section, Shreya’s article on Joseph Conrad and Krakow is also an Editor’s Pick (“The best of Scroll”). Please click here to read.
First Story is Britain’s leading creative writing charity, and it works with a whole host of organisations, especially secondary schools, with a focus on those with fewer opportunities, to ignite a love for creative writing https://firststory.org.uk/
Its collaborating writers include well-known names such as Tracy Chevalier (‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’), one of their ambassadors, as well as Neil Gaiman, Elif Shafak, Michael Morpurgo, Ian Rankin, and more, contributing writers to their current campaign, a ‘Six Word Stories’ auction that will raise money to support disadvantaged young writers https://ww2.emma-live.com/FirstStory/?list_lots
Find out more about the wonderful work they do, the people they work with (including Queen Camilla, First Story Patron), and Shreya’s place within it here
“…chill out we must. Make the best of a bad job. Get our heads down and plough on. That I can do, and have always done, but this unwinding malarkey — how on this storm-tossed earth does one do that? Should I phone a friend? Ask the audience? Can Pink Floyd help me get comfortably numb?
My bestie said looking forward to his retirement sustained him. But the average age of retirement in most countries has been pushed to seventy, which seems too distant a prize to even contemplate! Gone are the days, even in prosperous western states, when you could retire in your fifties with a pension that kept you in clover for the rest of your life. A subject so triggering for France this year, that a million would-be-pensioners fought over it with the gendarmes, up and down the Champs Elysees!
How about a ‘mini-retirement’ Gary-Neville-style? We cackled when this millionaire footballer waxed lyrical about his ‘new’ idea; a centuries-old concept everyday folk call a holiday! He might be better acquainted with it in practice, however, as we plebs could do with a proper break. The average American, often working two jobs, gets ten paid annual holidays, whilst the rest of us, marginally better off, are too beset with health, financial, parental, and other problems to relax.”
Please click here to read the article in full
“Especially loved the section you read on Sting. Your self effacing sense of humour couched in good writing always touches me!” said one viewer.
Please click here to watch
‘Banquets and Brickbats for Crumbling Kolkata’ is this month’s column for The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle.
“…f I crane a little from our back-bedroom window, it’s still possible to spy swaying fronds of palm and coconut trees. The sun too seems to slant into this room the way it did in our childhood, illuminating its new walls of calming azure. In the quiet of the afternoon, the tap-tap-tap of a kingfisher or ledge-loping monkey can sometimes still be heard. Even the hubbub of the local bazaar is a pleasantly muted rhythm when filtering in from afar…”
Please read it in full here
Shreya Sen-Handley 