What’s Indian fiction writing in 2026 like? Between evolving readership, self-publishing platforms, AI writing and translations, how has an author’s journey changed? Join us for a retrospective with The Deodar Prize authors as they talk about their experiences and unveil the best stories of 2026, with Aadit Basu, the 2026 winner and Sumanya Velamur, shortlisted in 2024 in conversation with Ratul Ghosh, the runner-up for The Deodar Prize in 2023.
This will be followed by an interactive Q&A with the audience.
Here are the details:
Date: 21 November 2026, Saturday
Time: 6:00 PM
Venue: Champaca Bookstore, Vasanthnagar
About the book:
Tigers can be pets. The government can snatch your home. A midlife crisis can land you, fully clothed, in a swimming pool. From a vengeful goddess to a vomiting rice cooker, these stories carefully tread the ordinary alongside the fantastic. Short stories, like dreams, are visceral, vivid and hard to reconstruct; yet each bite leaves a distinct flavour on the tongue. Sweet. Sour. Salty. Spicy. Umami. Pick your flavour.
About the speakers:
Sumanya Anand Velamur is a researcher, social worker, impact consultant, and writer. She is based in Bengaluru. Her fiction and non-fiction works have been published in Kitaab, Feminism in India, Mean Pepper Vine, USAWA, Out of Print Blog, Quibble Lit, and Quillmark. Her stories were longlisted for the Hope Prize, 2025 and shortlisted for the Deodar Prize (and featured in the Deodar 2024 anthology), 2024 and the BWW R.K.Anand Prize, 2024.
Aadit Basu is a writer and designer based in Bangalore. By day, he is the founder of morphous Design Lab, a studio working at the intersection of craft and technology, solving problems that no one knew they had. He started his career as an architectural photographer, then became an artist investigating contemporary culture, but writing has always been at the heart of it all. He writes across fiction, poetry and cultural criticism, often drawn to memory, the internet and the strange absurdities of urban life.
About the moderator:
Till he had to care for his father, Ratul Ghosh was a conventional engineer-MBA-CXO. As part of the reset, he started writing fiction about suffering and caring. He was runners-up at the inaugural Deodar Prize and was awarded the BWW RK Anand Memorial Award last year. His publications include Hammock, Usawa, Bangalore Review, Out of Print, Muse India and Hooghly Review. He lives in Bangalore and is currently writing a memoir and a collection of short fiction.