“Who else can write intimately about identity, feminism, sexuality, freedom, discrimination than a woman, from the inside out? ” – Saras Manickam (Malayasian Author)

Team Kitaab is in conversation with Malayasian author Saras Manickam as a part of the South Asian Women Writers Feature.

For the whole of March, we will be featuring South Asian Women Writers on Kitaab for the whole of March. You can read the editor’s note to know more about this.

Today, we are featuring an award-winning writer from Malaysia, Saras Manickam. Her story, My Mother Pattu was placed regional winner for Asia in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, in 2019. Available online on granta.com, it was published in the Bloomsbury US anthology, The Art and Craft of Asian Stories, in 2021, and in The Best of Malaysian Short Fiction in English 2010-2020.  

Another story, Charan, won the 2017 DK Dutt Award for Literary Excellence.  Some of her other stories have appeared in various anthologies. In a concurrent life, Saras is a language trainer, copywriter, and writer of school workbooks as well as a creative writing coach.