GPIA alumnae Mala Kumar (Paths of Marriage) and Aarti Virani (Vogue India, WSJ) will be featured on separate panels Saturday, April 4th as part of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) two-day interdisciplinary literary festival, Emerge: New Mediums, New Voices held at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, 110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor (btwn 6th and 7th Aves).
Mala will present on Sex on Paper: Emerging Sexual Identities (Novelists’ Panel), from 4:30 to 6 PM. She and one other panelist will discuss the shifting sexual identities of the characters they have written, reflecting on how sexuality is portrayed in South Asian literature.
Aarti will present on Identity and Image: Contextualizing our Experiences Online (Editorial Writers’ Panel), from 3 to 4 PM. She and other panelists will discuss how their relationship to their South Asian identity affects their point of view on news events and their approach to writing opinion pieces and blog posts. How does one write true to the history and identity of a South Asian female without being boxed in by publications and audiences?
The South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) is an initiative serving South Asian women by showcasing cutting-edge work that deals intelligently with issues of gender and cultural representation. The festival will be held Friday, April 3rd to Saturday, April 4th and will feature screenwriters, memoirists and journalists who challenge the boundaries and contexts of the written word.
