Episode 48: Sharbari Ahmed: Breaking South Asian Stereotypes Across Genres

Suffering from writer's block? Seek inspiration by listening to author Sharbari Ahmed's journey writing across different genres. She shares why it is important for her to challenge tropes about South-Asians, particularly Bangladeshis and Muslims, in her pieces. I hope you leave feeling motivated to turn your daydreams into stories as I did. - Afsana Oreen Sharbari’s short fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Asian Pacific American Journal, Catamaran, Caravan Magazine, Inroads, Wasafiri, Painted Bride Quarterly and Roanoke Review. Her debut novel, Dust Under Our Feet (working title) is forthcoming in 2019 by Amazon India/Westland Publishing.  She is a 2018 Storyknife Fellow and a Tribeca All Access Fellow. She is on the faculty of the MFA program at Manhattanville College and Artist in Residence in the Film and Television MA Program at Sacred Heart University. In 2018, she gave a TEDx talk about grappling with her Muslim identity, entitled, “Between the Kabaah Sharif and a Hard Place.”  She was on the writing team for Season One of the TV Series, “Quantico” on ABC. Most recently she wrote the screen adaptation of Mitali Perkin’s YA novel Rickshaw Girl. Her debut book The Ocean of Mrs. Nagai: Stories was released in November 2013 by Daily Star Books.   Her play Raisins Not Virgins was produced by the Workshop Theater Company and has been performed worldwide. The screenplay version was part of the Tribeca All Access program at the Tribeca Film Festival. She was born in Bangladesh and raised in New York, Connecticut and Ethiopia. She lives in Darien, CT. Follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pg/MrsNagai or Twitter @sharbarizohra!