STRANIMONDI 2022

L'evento Stranimondi si svolgerà a Milano, presso la Casa dei Giochi, dall'8 al 9 ottobre 2022. Fra gli ospiti, segnalo Priya Sharma, scrittrice britannica di origine indiana. Nel comunicato ufficiale si legge: 'Priya Sharma, scrittrice britannica di speculative fiction, è tra le più promettenti voci del panorama weird e fantastico contemporaneo. (...) È salita alla ribalta con l’antologia All the Fabulous Beasts (2018) e il romanzo breve Ormeshadow, entrambe le opere vincitrici dello Shirley Jackson Award e del British Fantasy Award e di prossima pubblicazione in Italia. Le sue storie esplorano temi come la diversità, la ricerca d’identità, la sopravvivenza, il concetto di “mostruosità”, e la sua poetica è spesso riconducibile al realismo magico. (...) Sue storie sono state tradotte in spagnolo, francese, ceco, polacco e italiano. A Stranimondi verrà presentata in anteprima l’edizione italiana di Ormeshadow (Edizioni Hypnos)'. 

Il sito di Priya Sharma riporta il comunicato stampa di Edizioni Hypnos: 

'Ormeshadow di Priya Sharma in arrivo a ottobre! Siamo felici di annunciare l’uscita di Ormeshadow, di Priya Sharma, tra le punte di diamante della nuova generazione del weird inglese. (...) Ormeshadow, opera vincitrice dello Shirley Jackson Award 2019 e del British Fantasy Award 2020, è una toccante storia di formazione, tra atmosfere oscure e messaggi di speranza, che presenta per la prima volta al pubblico italiano il talento di Priya Sharma. Ormeshadow sarà presentato in anteprima a Stranimondi 2022 mentre l’uscita ufficiale è prevista per il 13 ottobre 2022 nella collana Visioni, con traduzione di Elena Furlan.

Sinossi

Inghilterra. Età vittoriana. La vita del giovane Gideon Baltam ruota attorno alla famiglia e ai duri ritmi della fattoria di Ormesleep nella località di Ormeshadow, luogo intriso di miti e leggende: Orme, un drago sepolto e addormentato, pervaso da sogni di risentimento, di gelosia, di morte, si prepara al risveglio. O così almeno dicono le leggende.

My huge thanks to Edizioni Hypnos and Stranimondi - I am VERY excited to be attending the launch in Milan in October 2022. This book was originally published (...) in 2019'.

Vi riporto uno stralcio dell'intervista concessa da Priya Sharma a Tina Pavlik, pubblicata da Horror Writers Association il 7 maggio 2022. Asian heritage in horror: interview with Priya Sharma:

'Do you make a conscious effort to include Asian Diaspora characters and themes in your writing and if so, what do you want to portray?

I find this question difficult as I don't fit into a box easily. I come from a mixed heritage background (Indian/a quarter English) and grew up in the UK. We were one of two Asian families in our town and the other didn't speak to us. To this day I'm still not sure why that was. As a result of her Anglo-Indian upbringing my mum faced racism from both Indian and English people. I felt that very keenly and I think this has had an impact on how I see the world and how I write. My parents wanted me to fit in, which manifested itself in several ways. They gave me the very anglicised nickname of Pippa and didn't teach me Hindi. I feel very divorced from my Indian heritage and this reflects in my writing. I am neither one thing or another. I fear writing more traditional Asian Diaspora characters as I am scared of getting this wrong and causing offense. Or doing it badly and reaping scorn. The one time I did this was writing about an Indian man in a story called The Englishman. It's about my dad returning to India after over twenty years of living in England. I could do that with confidence as I took that trip with him.

What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?

Horror is everywhere, in the fabric of the everyday. Some people don't want to face what makes them afraid or uneasy, but I'd rather look at it face on. The unknown is always worse than the known. It's taken me a long time to realise why I like horror and it's only through writing it that I understand why. When I write about the painful things in my life, I find horror and the fantastic an easier way of processing them. The reality of suffering is truly terrible. It's real-life dramas about terrible events or experiences that I struggle to watch or read about. I find them easier to consider when cloaked in the fantastic and horrific than when looked directly. It abstracts them. There's also a lot of hope and redemption in horror, much more than people think. (...)

How do you feel the Asian community has been represented thus far in the genre and what hopes do you have for representation in the genre going forward?

If you're talking about representation in western markets I never really saw Asian characters in the books available to me when I was growing up, except as someone strange/exotic/disposable/mystic. Their being Asian was their single defining characteristic. I think/hope that's changing and they are moving to the centre of the stage as fully fleshed-out characters.

Who are some of your favourite Asian characters in horror?

Cyrah from "The Devourers" by Indrapamit Das. She experiences some horrific things but is a survivor. I loved how her journey ended. The other is the protagonist of Vikram Paralker's "Night Theatre" - a surgeon who is visited by the dead. It's not billed as horror but there are some elements of horror there. He is a flawed man who is just doing the best he can with what he has.

Who are some Asian Diaspora horror authors you recommend our audience check out?

I'm adding writers here that write fantasy/magical realism, dystopian fiction also: Isabel Yap, Indrapramit Das, Usman Malik, Vikram Paralker, Salman Rushdie, Rena Mason, Lee Murray, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mimi Mondal, Nadia Bulkin, Alma Katsu, V.H. Leslie. I can't resist including non-genre writer Jhumpa Lahiri for her short stories, which are a masterclass in the form'.

Aggiornamento del 29 marzo 2024 - Priya Sharma scrive nel suo sito: 'Ho avuto la fortuna di essere ospite a Stranimondi a Milano nel 2022 in occasione della pubblicazione della mia novella, Ormeshadow (Hypnos Edizioni). È stata un’esperienza emozionante: sono rimasta colpita dal loro amore per la narrativa di genere e da quanto tutti siano stati calorosi e accoglienti. Che persone fantastiche'.