Author Spotlight: Tashan Mehta
- Have you always wanted to be an author/poet?
I have! I’ve wanted to write since I was eight, and while the dream has evolved and changed in texture and depth since then, the kernel of wanting to put down what touches me and what I imagine on the blank page has stayed the same.
- What was your inspiration for ‘The Liar’s Weave’?
The idea of The Liar’s Weave has been knocking around in my head ever since I got my birth chart made. I was curious on what it would be like to live in a world where the future was known—and then curious about what it would be like to have someone born there who was future-less. Other elements of the book sprung up at different times; I wrote a short story about someone who could change reality with his lies, and then another one on my grandfather’s time in Parsi Colony. Through the years and many drafts, it all stitched together into a book.
- Tell us about this book.
The Liar’s Weave is set in an alternative 1920s India, where birth charts are real and the future is known. Into this world is born Zahan Merchant, a boy without a future, and it gives him this ability to change reality with his lies. The book explores the consequences of that power: both for Zahan Merchant’s family and the very fabric of the society he exists in.
- What is your work schedule like when you're writing?
It depends on where I am in the lifecycle of the book, to be honest. Right now, I’m nearing the end of a project and so I spend as much time as I can writing. I’ve lived three years with this project now and the story is sitting in me, so it’s just a question of putting my mind to paper and getting it out.
- What are your thoughts on reading?
I think it’s a cornerstone to how I understand my world, my craft and my own experiences. It’s also my safe space; a place I can retreat to when the world gets too much and your mind gets a bit too loud. Time suspends when you’re reading—unlike when you’re watching a TV show—and that suspension is deeply soothing.
- What genres do you prefer reading?
I generally enjoy speculative fiction, but I also draw a lot of depth and comfort from literary fiction.
- What book are you reading right now?
So right now I’ve shifted away from speculative fiction and am reading An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. I’ve just started but it has an excellent sense of voice.
- What do you have in store next for your readers?
I’m currently working on a speculative fiction novel about two sisters set in three different universes. It’s been three years on the book, so I’m looking forward to wrapping it up this year. The new book is there in the corner of my mind, and it’s waiting for me to focus on it.
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About:
Tashan Mehta is a novelist whose interest lies in form and the fantastical, and how a dialogue between these elements may offer us new and collective ways of seeing.
Her debut novel, The Liar’s Weave, was published in 2017 and shortlisted for the Prabha Khaitan Woman's Voice Award. She was part of the 2015 Sangam House Writers' Residency (India) and was British Council Writer-in-Residence at Anglia Ruskin University (Cambridge, UK) in 2018.
In 2019, she participated in Fieldwork 0.2, a multidisciplinary residency exploring alternative infrastructures for the future. She was commissioned by the Barbican (London, UK) to create an artefact that captures the essence of this experience; On Unknown Things will be published in 2020.
She studied at the universities of Warwick and Cambridge, an education that allowed her to prise open and play with language; it also gave her an abiding love for tea. Her short stories feature in several anthologies, and she is working on her next novel.
♥️Toodles♥️
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