Ep. 34: Imagining a child's view of the Partition of India with Veera Hiranandani, author of The Night Diary
In honor of the 73rd anniversary of the Partition of India, I’m thrilled to bring you this conversation with Veera Hiranandani, the U.S. based author of the wonderful middle grade fiction novel “The Night Diary”, which was recently awarded the Newbery Honor. Veera shares the real life story of creating “The Night Diary” which was inspired by her father’s childhood experience of migrating from Sindh during the partition, and how she brought this difficult period to life for a young audience. We chat about writing from one’s own and others’ truths, Jane Austen, writing groups and sai bhaji!
The full episode is below, on your favorite podcast app, or on iTunes and please do subscribe, so you don’t miss an episode!
SHOWNOTES FOR EPISODE 34:
Veera’s books on Indiebound
Books and other things we discussed:
Veera’s ground-breaking publisher Kokila Books
The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman
A Beautiful Lie by Irfan Master
Veera makes Sai Bhaji on KiLitTV (recipe also in The Night Diary)
1947 Partition Archive - an incredible resource which Veera turned to in her research
Follow us on Instagram for more on Veera and everything we mentioned in this episode!
Special thanks to Sagar Sarkar, Aman Moroney and the team @ Flying Carpet Productions for audio post-production engineering!
