Word Count: 753 | Reading Time: 3 min
While it is certainly true that writing, like many other artistic exertions, is, in fact, a solitary endeavor, it need not, should not be a lonely one. It takes a full, vibrant community for stories and their tellers to sustain themselves, in particular creatively. Imagination, like life, is better endured and ascended within a collective. I can speak of this from my own personal experience at both, Tasavvur and the Salam Award; a true found-family that has allowed my nascent writing dreams to appear accessible. And I’m here today to pay tribute to yet another such institution—people and work we ardently admire here at Tasavvur—that has made this happen for countless others across Southasia. Yes, that’s one word.
Himal Southasian needs no introduction, their work stands out for itself. Though they began in 1987 as a bi-monthly magazine of the Himalaya, by 1996 their focus would shift and expand to include all of Southasia. Since then, Himal has been a champion of diverse pan-Subcontinent journalism and cultural content. Bravely defying nationalistic rhetoric in favor of a more independent as well as, simultaneously, an inter-linked overview of this region, its people and their stories.
Today, we’re here to celebrate Himal’s latest endeavor in their ambitious mission to promote regional voices: the Himal Fiction Fest. Inaugurated in 2023, this two-week online literary festival began as an attempt to promote emerging Southasian voices in fiction. Presently, with two successful editions under their belt, and a third fest mid-way with online discussion panels and six new original stories being released over the course of two weeks, Himal Fiction Fest stands on a towering stage of its own.
This year, in particular, their commitment to highlight original Southasian speculative fiction has been a cause of great admiration and excitement for us here at Tasavvur. It has been a source of great joy and inspiration to see a leading platform as dominant and expansive as Himal celebrate and pave the way for new voices in speculative fiction, a genre that is just now slowly beginning to sink its footholds within the present-day Southasian literary landscape.
It’s been a great start already for the Himal Fiction 2025. The theme for this year’s original fiction submissions, imagined futures of Southasia, have been remarkably complimented with thoughtfully-curated online discussion panels.
The first amongst them, a panel on the State of Southasian Speculative Fiction moderated by Gautam Bhatia—and attended by many of our Tasavvur members including yours truly because, how could we not?—was a thought-provoking dialogue on the current state, and future, of Southasian speculative fiction. The panelists, Karthika VK, Theena Kumaragurunathan, as well as our very own founding member of the Salam Award, Usman T. Malik, provided a nuanced outlook on speculative fiction from a cultural, writing and publishing perspective. Also in discussion, among other subjects, were the perils, pros and perimeters of writing in English, with regards to the colonial history of the language in the Southasian context. The second panel, held this past Monday and moderated by Priteegandha Naik, broadly expanded upon Caste, Gender and Resistance in Southasian Speculative Fiction. The panelists, including Bina Shah, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Rakesh Khanna, Rashmi Ruth Devadasan and R T Samuel, also highlighted upon the presence, subversion and curation of these subjects, as well as other forms of identity and struggle, within their own works. The later half of this panel, held in partnership with the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation, includes readings by this year’s finalists as well as the winner announcement. Our heartiest congratulations to all the finalists! Both panels are currently available to view on Himal’s Youtube channel and website.
Lastly, any discussion on the Himal Fiction Fest 2025 is incomplete without a shoutout for this year’s shortlisted stories, four of which are now up to read. In order of release, they are: Ode to Abudnance by Arsalan Athar, Atrificial Emotion by Sakina Hassan, The Waters Between Us by Glen Loveland, and We Have Always Lived in the Temple by Amal Singh. (Imagine our absolute delight when we learned that our very own Amal, an editor at Tasavvur, is one of the selected finalists? Isn’t it simply miraculous when things align so perfectly?!) The remaining two shorts will be released on Himal’s website this week. And we will return here with part two of this spotlight to present a full overview of all six of them.
Until then, watch out for this space and go follow Himal everywhere!