Contributor Spotlight: Sreedhevi Iyer
Sreedhevi Iyer’s essay “The Mother is Dead, Long Live the Mother.” is part of Issue 81 of Bellingham Review. Subscribe or purchase a single issue through our Submittable page here.
What would you like to share with our readers about the work you contributed to Bellingham Review?
The essay came out of a real life incident, and reflects the wheels of processing the incident. I was also traveling quite a bit around then, and the willful displacement into different geographical, linguistic, and cultural contexts forced me to re-evaluate my own placement in things, and how norms are malleable.
Tell us about your writing life.
I’ve been writing since childhood, although it’s in my adult life that I became more aware of the craft. A repetitive trope in my work is the journey of coming of age, or rites of passage. This might be because I lacked clear markers of life transitions, and so I’ve always been drawn to experiences/narratives that speak of transformations towards deeper human insights.
Which non-writing aspect(s) of your life influence(s) your writing the most?
Movement, in the more prosaic sense. I love walking a place, finding its people, then going towards a philosophy.
What writing advice has stayed with you?
Start late, get out early.
What is your favorite book (or essay, poem, short story)?
This is hard. The Handmaid’s Tale slew me. Nora Ephron’s Crazy Salad and Wallflower At The Orgy are so great. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid is an all-time favorite, for its craft choices.
What are you reading right now?
Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words. I thought it’d be better, but I think that might be due to reading the English translation from the Italian. The translation sounds too flat, too repetitive of the same ideas.
What project(s) are you working on now, or next?
I started a short story about a conservative Muslim girl falling in love with a Chinese boy. I have no idea where it will go.
Anything else our readers might want to know about you?
I once ran into Geoffrey Rush in the middle of the street in Brisbane, Australia. We ended up chatting, before he had to be whisked off by bodyguards when we started to get attention. He was the loveliest man ever. When he autographed my book (before selfies!) I thought I’d sell it on eBay, but for some reason I never have.
Where can our readers connect with you online?
https://www.facebook.com/sreedhevi.ramachandran/, @SreedheviIyer (Twitter)
Sreedhevi Iyer is the author of Jungle Without Water and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Penang Monthly Book Award in 2017. She has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the US. Her work has appeared around the world, including Hotel Amerika, Drunken Boat, The Writer’s Chronicle, Bellingham Review, Asian American Literary Review, and Ginosko Literary Journal in the US, Two Thirds North in Sweden, Free Word Centre in the UK, and Asia Literary Review in Hong Kong. She has also guest edited Drunken Boat’s Hong Kong Special Folio and special issues of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. She currently lives in Melbourne.
Featured Image: “Echoes of a Stellar Landing” by NASA