Pangea listed in The Hindu Books page

Thrilled to report that 'The Hindu' lists Pangea in its feature 'First Look' on the books and literature page on December 2, 2012. It appears online on December 3 and maybe seen if you scroll down the page.

ARTS » BOOKS           December 3, 2012

First Look

December 3, 2012

Pangea: An Anthology of Stories from Around the Globe, Edited by Indira Chandrasekhar and Rebecca Lloyd, Thames River Press, price not stated
This anthology of 34 short stories by 25 writers from 13 countries is a reflection of the title. Pangea means “all lands” or “all earth”. The writers include journalists, scientists, a lawyer, a costume designer, a magazine editor, a crofter in the Scottish highlands, a bookseller, and a writer-in-residence at a young offenders’ prison. Their narratives are equally diverse and distinctive —whether about a man’s confrontation and failure on a road in Scotland, the dramatic preparations for a big birthday party in Nigeria, or the moment a young man comes face-to-face with his Bollywood idol — but have an enormous commonality. The conflicts faced and the emotions felt are recognisable, irrespective of the authors’cultural identities or the settings of the stories themselves.

Pangea Readings

At the Thunderbolt, Bristol, July 4, 2012:

At the Blackwell's Bristol launch, July 26, 2012:

At unputdownable, the Bristol Literature Festival, October 20, 2012:

Interviews with Pangea Editors

Rebecca Lloyd and I talk about putting Pangea together:

Interviewed at Writewords on finding and editing the stories in Pangea

Reflect on the making of the anthology at Crawl Space

On how to create a must-read anthology at Nokia Connect

At Flash Fiction Chronicles about many aspects of Pangea

Pangea Reviewed

 Pangea, reviews and listings. Pangea may be purchased here. 

The Hindu books page.

Valerie O'Riordan says it is a 'strong and diverse collection'. 

Book Geek writes a comment on each story.

Jonathan Pinnock says 'it's a pretty impressive collection'. 

Producing an Anthology: Pangea

Pangea Blog Tour

This post is the eighth on the Pangea blog tour (updated links here), and so many of the writers have had a chance to talk about their work – and about being part of Pangea. Tremendous, really! To think that when we began our first email conversations about the anthology, Rebecca and I had no idea whether we would find enough stories to make up an entire book (which is silly considering what a number of lovely writers there are on Writewords), let alone getting a publisher, and marketing the book. It’s wonderful having it released and visible, and hopefully being read.

I spend a lot of time as, I presume, many of you reading this post do, immersed in short fiction. In my case, reading, writing and editing stories. Editing for Out of Print, the short fiction magazine I run is akin to but different from the experience with Pangea. Out of Print appears quarterly, we get a range of stories, and each quarter, of the best we get, we choose the ones we like and that we think work together. We examine these for grammar and style. Sometimes we are invasive, but more often than not, we maintain some distance from the story when editing it. The idea, after all, is to showcase the range of work we receive. With Pangea, however, because we were trying to create a coherent piece of work with consistency in quality and sharpness we read each story with acute engagement, and with, may I say, an intimate eye.

The collaborative editing process Rebecca and I devised was careful and exhaustive. The stories were distributed between the two of us for the first read. Each of us identified stylistic as well as grammar and punctuation related questions that struck us, and offered solutions. The story was then passed to the other editor, and then back, going through as many cycles as was required to make it satisfactory. While the process was thoughtful, it also developed organically and at one point we had a ridiculously elaborate yet reliable colour code that also made use of both lower and upper case letters. I am not sure the authors would have been reassured had they seen one of their stories marked in red, blue, green, lavender, pink…. During that intense period of interaction on the works, not only did the colours make complete sense and help us keep track of our comments, but the excessiveness of it was funny. Might your pink comma in the middle of the blue sentence in the green paragraph be replaced by a semi-colon? – bizarre avatars of McCall Smith’s German professors? No not at all, just the Pangea editors at work.

When the editing was done, I realised that I had invested my creative energy in a way that was having consequences on my writing. Having the editors eye so on the alert while writing myself was obstructive and it took me some time to get back into an easier flow. Despite that, I loved it. Harold Ross, founding editor of the New Yorker is known to have said, ‘Editing is the same as quarreling with writers--same thing exactly’(1). That was in the early part of the 20^th Century. Whether it is because it is a different time, place, product, or type of writer, our experience with Pangea was the opposite: civilised and respectful and rewarding. Negative things have also been said about editing an anthology. The University of Iowa Press for example, has this on their site, ‘The truth is that you're not going to make any money or advance your professional career and you will spend an enormous amount of time organizing and collating your material.’ (2). Although, they do continue in the next sentence with, ‘But still there is something satisfying about creating a collection that adds up to more than the sum of its parts, about articulating an idea that is dear to you, about carrying this idea out until it becomes a solid book.’(2). I think putting together an anthology is akin to curating an exhibition. Every piece of art is chosen with care and juxtaposed thoughtfully and reflects the sensibilities of the curator/s; and together, the pieces have a meaning.

One of the exciting milestones in the Pangea process was finding a publisher, especially one with a connection to both India and the UK. It seemed so very appropriate – I live in India, Rebecca in the UK and we were looking to find someone who would understand what bridging worlds is like. Unfortunately, the extraordinarily serendipitous connection isn’t something we have been able to avail of to the fullest extent – the book is not out in India yet. In early 2011, Chandrahas Choudhury said on his highly regarded blog, The Middle Stage: India’s book economy is, however, on a different arc, from that of the West and, like the Indian newspaper industry, is still on its way up rather than down. For an observer of Indian literature in English (for the purposes of this essay, I include under “Indian literature in English” both work originally written in English and that translated into English), the last decade was full of bright lights on all three counts of publishing, book-selling, and the density and internal diversity of the idea of literature and the spread of a reading culture. (3) A year and a half after that essay, there are even more publishing houses than those listed by Chandrahas that are bringing books out in India – Aleph, Hachette India, Bloomsbury India to name but three. It is an exciting time to be writing, and an exciting time to be published in India. And Pangea will be released here soon, we have been told.

Would I do another anthology? Yes. It was acutely rewarding and I would love working with Rebecca again. And discovering wonderful new writing is always exciting. Thank you, once again, to all our Pangea writers for their contributions.

1. From an article by Richard Nordquist in About.com
2. The University of Iowa Press guidelines
3. A survey of Indian Literature by Chandrahas Choudhury

Pangea Blog Tour: updates

PANGEA BLOG TOUR, 2012
Purchase Pangea in hard copy or kindle on Amazon UK Amazon US Flipkart

July 9: ‘Reflections on the making of Pangea’ at Crawl Space, Bristol, UK. The editors talk about choosing a publisher for Pangea.

July 12: ‘Working with other writers’ at Words in Place, California, USA. Gay Degani and Sarah Hilary discuss themes of support, discovery and feedback.

July 18: ‘How to create a must read short story collection’ at Nokia Connects, worldwide. Feature by Joel Willans talking to editors, Rebecca Lloyd and Indira Chandrasekhar.

July 30: ‘Promoting Pangea’ at Deborah Rickards blog, Bristol, UK. Debs Rickard reports from the launch of Pangea at Blackwell’s.

Aug 9: ‘Sarah Hilary Interview - Pangea Anthology’ at Women Rule Writer, Ireland. Nuala Ni Chonchúir interviews Sarah Hilary about weddings fairs and trailers parks, and the inspiration for her stories.

Aug 19: 'PANGEA blog tour: short stories travelling the globe' at Michelle Elvy’s blog, New Zealand. Clayton Lister's piece about discovering Writewords and being in Pangea.

Aug 20: 'Not Exactly True' at Valerie O’Riordan’s blog, Manchester, UK. Lisa Marie Trump talks about extending her writing from the theatre to the literary space.

Aug 27: ‘Producing an Anthology: Pangea’ at Indira Chandrasekhar’s blog, Mumbai, India. Indira  talks about the editing process, on putting the anthology together, and on Pangea in India. 

Sept 2: 'Pangea author Tara Conklin' at Oonah Joslin’s blog, Northumberland, UK. Tara tells Oonnah how writing has gone from being something private to playing a role in her decision to leave a job in the city.   

Sept 9: 'An Interview with Oonah V. Joslin' at Tara Conklin’s blog, Seattle, USA. Oonah talks to Tara about her story, 'Missie's Summer', a story of loss, and about other things that she is working on.

Sept 16: ‘Cultural writing and inspiration’ at Crawl Space, Bristol UK. Fehmida Zakeer and Liesl Jobson discuss their stories, and about how they view their own work as a sort of homecoming. 

Sept 23: 'An Interview with Joel Willans - Pangea Blog Tour' at Unmitigated Audacity, Southampton, UK. Joel talks to Calum Kerr.

Oct 1: 'Pangea' at Vanessa Gebbie’s blog, Brighton, UK. Vanessa opens the post with a mention of the Bristol launch and Tom Williams talks about working with his 'inner editor'.

Jan 2013: Feature article in ‘The New Writer’ magazine, worldwide

Pangea Editors Interviewed on Writewords

Rebecca Lloyd and I talked to Anna Reynolds at Writewords about the process and experience of putting together the anthology of short fiction, PANGEA.

PANGEA comes out in a few weeks.

Pangea

Pangea is announced on the Anthem Press website.

Pangea

An Anthology of Stories from Around the Globe

Edited by Rebecca Lloyd and Indira Chandrasekhar

An anthology of short stories by authors from across the globe.

Imprint: Thames River Press

Paperback

ISBN 9789380601571

April 2012 | 304 Pages | 216 x 140mm / 8.5 x 5.5

PRICE:  Rs 325.00

About This Book

This anthology of thirty-four short stories by twenty-five writers from thirteen countries reflects its title, ‘Pangea’, meaning ‘all lands’ or ‘all earth’. The writers featured include journalists, scientists, a lawyer, a costume designer, a magazine editor, a crofter in the Scottish highlands, a bookseller, and a writer-in-residence at a young offenders’ prison, and their stories are as different and as interesting as their occupations. Their narratives are equally diverse and distinctive; there are quiet voices, brave voices, tender voices, and haunting voices.

And yet the perspectives of this collection, its range of tones – be they the raw intensity of a man’s confrontation and failure on a road in Scotland, the dramatic preparations for a big birthday party in Nigeria, or the moment a young man comes face-to-face with his Bollywood idol – have enormous commonality; the conflicts faced and the emotions felt by the characters are recognizable, irrespective of the cultural identities of the authors or the cultural settings of the stories themselves.

The writers of these unique short stories are all members of the online writers’ community known as Writewords.

Readership: Cultural anthropologists, lovers of short stories and international fiction, university students, travellers, fellow writers.

Author Information

Indira Chandrasekhar grew up and worked in India, the USA and Switzerland as a research scientist in biophysics. She is the founding editor of ‘Out of Print’, an online magazine for short fiction with connections to the South Asian subcontinent. A number of her stories have appeared in magazines such as ‘Eclectica’ and ‘The Little Magazine’. [NP] Rebecca Lloyd is a novelist and short story writer. Her novel ‘Under the Exquisite Gaze’ was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize 2010. She was a semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize 2010 for her short story collection ‘Don’t Drink the Water’. Her children’s novel, ‘Halfling’, was published by Walker Books in January 2011. She teaches creative writing via the UK online writers’ community Writewords, and hosts their short story group. ‘The River’, one of Rebecca’s contributions to the anthology, won the Bristol Short Story Prize 2008.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction; THE RIVER by Rebecca Lloyd; BOSTON BROWN BREAD by Liesl Jobson; ALL FOR JUST FIFTY BAHT by Joel Willans; ROCK FALL by Indira Chandrasekhar; SIGNS OF OUR REDEMPTION by Tara Conklin ; YOU’RE DEAD by Tom Remer Williams; THE DOE by John Bolland; THE WEDDING FAIR by Sarah Hilary; BIG SISTER by Shola Olowu-Asante; MISSY’S SUMMER by Oonah Joslin; WHITE HORSES by Stephen Tyson; MANIC by Juli Klass; PASSPORT by Sarah Leipciger; THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO by Katie Mayes; SHUTTERED LANDSCAPE by Fehmida Zakeer; SODA LAKES by Liesl Jobson; PLACES TO GO AND PEOPLE TO MEET by Lisa Marie Trump; RAPTOR by Rebecca Lloyd; MOTHER’S NOT HOME by Jennifer Walmsley; ADORATION by Indira Chandrasekhar; RABBIT CAKE by Emmanuella Dekonor; HOLLOWS by Stephen Tyson; FALLOUT by Trilby Kent; THE UNDERCURRENT by Clayton Lister; LOVEFM by Sarah Hilary; BREAKDOWN by Vanessa Gebbie; SOME GAME by Sarah Leipciger; THE WORLD’S END by Andy Charman; MATILDA AND THE MISSING by Caroline Robinson; STEALING THEIR CHURCHES BEHIND THEM by Trilby Kent; HUNTER’S QUARRY by Dee Weaver; CITY PEOPLE by Shola Olowu-Asante; THE FIXER by Joel Willans; SOFÍA THE BEAUTIFUL by Mary Farquharson; Authors’ Biographies

Pangea

Pangea, an anthology of short stories compiled and edited by myself and Rebecca Lloyd is slated to be out in April next year.

This anthology of thirty-four short stories reflects its title, Pangea, meaning all lands or all earth. The twenty-five authors whose stories are included here come from, live in, or have connections with many countries including Canada, England, Finland, Ghana, India, Wales, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Scotland, South Africa, and the U.S.A.  Naturally, the stories reflect varied perspectives and strike a range of different tones, but broadly speaking, they are about loss, identity and entrapment, and that fine tipping of order into chaos that is so often a characteristic of skilfully written short stories.