Michelle Cahill

11/11/19 Arts & Culture , Australia , Diaspora & Travel , Society & Politics # , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An open letter to UWA from a former international student and UWAP author

An open letter to UWA from a former international student and UWAP author

Dear Mr. Tayyeb Shah,

 

I came to Australia as an international student from Mumbai, India in 1998. One reason that attracted me to Australian institutions of higher education was their commitment to creativity, to intellectual rigour and to encouraging a plurality of ideas.

I wrote a book of short stories called The Permanent Resident, mainly to chronicle the lives of Indians in Australia, including the lives of international students. This book is published by UWAP. It has since won a NSW Premier’s Literary Award 2018 (Multicultural), been very well-reviewed in Australia and India, is on the syllabi of a number of universities and on several “must-read” booklists. This would not have happened without UWAP, particularly Terri-ann White, championing my book.

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19/03/16 Arts & Culture , Australia , Diaspora & Travel , Society & Politics # , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Vital literary genealogies

Vital literary genealogies

By Anupama Pilbrow

 

 

When I was ten years old, my godsister’s Indian mother and non-Indian father gave me a children’s novel called Neela: Victory Song by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. I devoured it. It was about a girl my age living through India’s Partition. Neela was the first book by an Indian author that I ever read to myself.

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