Speculative India: In conversation with Lavanya Lakshminarayan, author of Analog/Virtual (Hachette India, 2020) published as The Ten Percent Thief (Solaris USA/UK, 2023)

ABSTRACT

Lavanya Lakshminarayan is the author of Analog/Virtual and other simulations of your future which has recently been released in the UK and the USA as The Ten Percent Thief as part of a three-book deal. She is a Locus Award finalist and is the first science fiction writer to win the ‘Times of India AutHer’ Award and the ‘Valley of Words Award’, both prestigious literary awards in India. Her work has also been longlisted for a BSFA Award. Lavanya has been published in several magazines and anthologies, and her short fiction is forthcoming in the anthologies, The Best of World Science Fiction: Volume 2 and Someone in Time, among other publications. Lavanya’s occasionally a game designer, and has built worlds for Zynga Inc.’s FarmVille franchise, Mafia Wars, and other games. She lives between the cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad in India and is currently working on her next novel. Lavanya is in conversation with E. Dawson Varughese is a Snr Fellow at Manipal Centre for Humanities, (MAHE), Manipal, India whose research on post-millennial fiction in English currently focusses on speculative and dystopian fiction. She has recently completed a manuscript for Bloomsbury on Indian speculative fiction in English and ideas of desi dystopias.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

E. Dawson Varughese

E. Dawson Varughese is a Snr Fellow at Manipal Centre for Humanities, India, E. Dawson Varughese’s research explores the artistic, literary and visual responses to post-millennial ‘New India’. She publishes on genre fiction, Indian graphic narratives and Mumbai’s public wall art. Post-millennial Indian Speculative Fiction in English is to be published by Bloomsbury in 2024.