"I have a platform, I can share that platform with other people, that's
what my mum would have expected at this stage of my career. That's why
things like The Good Immigrant' came about because a win for me is a win
for the community" Nikesh Shukla.

Amanda Blainey talks to Nikesh Shukla who is a novelist and screenwriter.
His 7th novel Brown Baby will be published in February 2021. Brown Baby is
a memoir of race, family, and home that is essentially a love letter
written to his children and his mum after her death. It's about loss and
rebirth.

In this episode, we talk about

White privilege

Writers of colour

How The Good Immigrant came about
The predominant white voice in literature

Racism and its prevalence in publishing and the arts

Normalising our reality

Anxiety about being outspoken and burning bridges

The problem with diversity panels

Interrogating representation and identity

How his mum's death permitted him to speak his truth

Cooking his way through grief

Food as a way to connect to his mum

How heritage lives on in us

A win for him is a win for the community

Roots for change

Processing grief through his new book Brown Baby

Grieving in a new way since coronavirus

Nikesh is the author of Coconut Unlimited (shortlisted for the Costa First
Novel Award), Meatspace, and the critically acclaimed The One Who Wrote
Destiny. He is a contributing editor to the Observer Magazine and was
previously their columnist. Nikesh is the editor of the bestselling essay
collection, The Good Immigrant, which won the reader's choice at the Books
Are My Bag Awards. He co-edited The Good Immigrant USA with Chimene
Suleyman. He is the author of two YA novels, Run, Riot (shortlisted for a
National Book Award) and The Boxer (longlisted for the Carnegia Medal).
Nikesh was one of Time Magazine's cultural leaders, Foreign Policy
magazine's 100 Global Thinkers, and The Bookseller's 100 most influential
people in publishing in 2016 and 2017. He is the co-founder of the literary
journal, The Good Journal, and The Good Literary Agency. Nikesh is a fellow
of the Royal Society Of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy.

Podcast references

https://www.reachoutproject.co.uk/

http://www.nikesh-shukla.com/