Book Launch and Reading

"You could scream and get lost in the indistinguishability of all rant. You could keep the two minutes of silence which deceives you into believing that the mourning is over even as it’s still cutting you open. Or you could write the poem that Khetarpal writes"  -- Akhil Katyal on Devanshi Khetarpal's 'Small Talk' 

Devanshi Khetarpal will be reading from her poetry collection, 'Small Talk' at Baithak— The Art House— on August 11, 2019 from 5pm-6:30pm. Signed copies will be sold on a sliding scale of Rs. 150 to Rs. 200.  

ABOUT 'SMALL TALK:'  

'Small Talk' is a poetry collection by Devanshi Khetarpal published by Writers Workshop India, Kolkata in 2019 with a foreword by Akhil Katyal. The fifty poems in Khetarpal's poetry collection match the precise to the ponderous, the mundane to the sublime, and question what it means to be Indian, what it means to be at home or away from home, and what it means to be connected with larger elements of nature through the minuscule experiences of daily life and its silences. Written over a period of two years across various places-- Iowa City, Siglufjordur, Bhopal, New Delhi, Mumbai, New York-- the poems range in volume, in form and style, in density and in the burdens they give shape to.  

Writers Workshop books are published from Lake Gardens, Kolkata. The layout and editing is by P. Lal with a Sheaffer calligraphy pen. Printed by Abhijit Nath in Lake Gardens Press. 'Small Talk' is a limited edition. The book is gold-stitched, hand-embossed, hand-pasted and hand-bound by Tulamish Mohiuddin with handloom saree cloth woven and designed in India, to provide visual beauty and the intimate texture of a book-feel. Writers Workshop bindings are not concealed behind ephemeral glossy jackets. Every Writers Workshop publication is a hand-crafted artefact.  

ABOUT WRITERS WORKSHOP:  

Writers Workshop is a literary publisher based in Kolkata, India, which was founded by the Indian poet and scholar P. Lal in 1958. It has and continues to publish eminent and emerging Indian authors of post-independence urban Indian literature. It has published the first books and poetry collections of Indian writers such as Harnidh Kaur, Nilesh Mondal, Sahana Mukherjee, Trivarna Hariharan, Meena Alexander, Akhil Katyal, Hoshang Merchant, Nabina Das, Keki Daruwalla, Mani Rao, Agha Shahid Ali, Nissim Ezekiel, Ruskin Bond, Kamala Das and Jayant Mahapatra among many others. Website: www.writersworkshopindia.com.  

ABOUT DEVANSHI KHETARPAL 

Devanshi Khetarpal is a poet, editor and translator from Bhopal, India, who currently lives in Manhattan, New York, where she is a student at New York University majoring in Comparative Literature with a minor in Creative Writing. She has studied abroad for a semester at NYU Florence and for a summer at NYU Paris. She is a recipient of the David J. Travis Undergraduate Research Fund for research on Modern Italy. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in Sahitya Akademi's Indian Literature, Best Indian Poetry 2018, Vayavya, Aainanagar, Souvenir, and TRACK//FOUR among others. She is a former intern at Poets House, editor-in-chief and founder of Inklette Magazine, poetry reader for Muzzle Magazine and application manager for The Speakeasy Project, and a former editing intern at NYU La Pietra Dialogues. Her poetry collection, 'Small Talk,' is releasing this fall from Writers Workshop India, Kolkata. To know more and subscribe to her mailing list or get notified about future readings, visit her website: www.devanshikhetarpal.co