Imagining New Worlds: Critical Thinking and the Power of Writing Now

Chair: Professor Claire Chambers

This hybrid workshop is a collaboration between the Hope Consortium and the Department of English and Related Literature Modern School. For this instalment, we will be joined by the brilliant editor and non-fiction writer Susheila Nasta to discuss critical thinking and the power of writing now. The event will begin with Susheila presenting her essay ‘Imagining New Worlds: Critical Thinking and the Power of Writing Now’. This will be followed by an ‘in conversation’ between her and Professor Claire Chambers, before opening up to audience participation and questions on literature, diversity, and futures of hope. Open to participants both on Zoom and in person; please contact claire.chambers@york.ac.uk for any questions, and/or register at the below Eventbrite. 

Susheila Nasta MBE FRSL is Founding Editor of Wasafiri, the Magazine of International Contemporary Writing she launched in 1984. Educated in India, Holland, Germany and Britain, she currently Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at Queen Mary University of London. Well-known as a pioneer in decolonising the curriculum, she has published widely, especially on the Caribbean, the South Asian diaspora and black Britain. Her books include: Home Truths: Fictions of the South Asian Diaspora in Britain (2002), Writing Across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk (2004), India in Britain (2012), Asian Britain: A Photographic History (2013), Brave New Words: The Power of Writing Now (2019), and the co-editing of the first Cambridge history of Black and Asian British Writing (2020). She is currently completing, The Bloomsbury Indians, a group biography. Invited judge and chair of a number of literary prizes, including the SI Leeds Prize, the OGM Bocas Award for Caribbean Literature and most recently the 2021 David Cohen award, she has led a number of major AHRC-funded research and public engagement projects. Honoured with an MBE in 2011, in 2019 she received the Royal Society of Literature’s distinguished Benson Medal for an exceptional contribution to literature. In 2020 she was nominated Honorary Fellow of the English Association for her work in English Studies.