An Indian poet and writer.
Pariat was born in Jorhat, Assam, and grew up between Shillong and several tea estates in Assam. She was educated at Loreto Convent, Shillong and The Assam Valley School. Thereafter she obtained a BA in English Literature from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and an MA in History of Art and/or Archaeology from SOAS, University of London.
She is the editor of online literary journal Pyrta, which she founded in 2010. Her writing has featured in a number of Indian and international magazines, such as Time Out Delhi, The Caravan and Internazionale. Pariat teaches Creative Writing and History of Art at Ashoka University.
Awards and honours
In 2013, Pariat’s debut collection of short stories Boats on Land won the Sahitya Akademi Young Writer Award for the English language, and a Crossword Book Award (fiction). The same work was also shortlisted for the 2013 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, and longlisted for the 2013 uday lakhanpal International Short Story Award and the 2013 Tata Literature Live! First Book Award Seahorse was shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize (2015).
Style
In Boats on Land, Pariat’s stories – set between Shillong, Cherrapunji and Assam – undertake fictional re-imaginings of the transformations that swept through Northeast India during a period of three centuries, starting in the 1850s. Weaving together local folklore and tradition with unfolding social and political events, Pariat’s style has been likened to magical realism as well as to Haruki Murakami‘s writing. Jeet Thayil commented on her stories to be ‘revelatory and original’.
Bibliography
Fiction
The Nine-Chambered Heart, HarperCollins India, New Delhi, 2017.
Seahorse: A novel, Random House India, New Delhi, 2014.
Boats on Land: A collection of short stories, Random House India, New Delhi, 2012.
Poetry
- The Yellow Nib Modern English Poetry by Indians (Sudeep Sen ed.), Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University Belfast, 2011 .
- Kavi Kala: The Visual Poetry Project (Madness Manali ed.), Cinnamon Teal Print and Publishing, Goa, 2010.
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