Guest author Megha Majumdar joins us for this week’s quaranTEEN voices gathering! Her debut novel, A Burning, was released this June and is a New York Times Bestseller. Set in India, the story follows three characters trying to change the course of their lives and whose fates are reliant on each other after a tragedy. Born and raised in India, Megha now resides in New York City.

From Megha:

Powerful writing comes from a place of feeling, and being attentive to feeling. If you’ve ever felt moved by a piece of writing, what you’re connecting to is the emotion the writer brought to their words. So let’s start by thinking about our own feelings—on something as small as ice cream on a hot day (perhaps this makes you happy!) or as big as climate change and how it’ll affect New York (perhaps this is something you worry about) or as immediate as how the COVID-19 pandemic has been handled in this country (perhaps this makes you angry).

Prompt:
Write a short story (or poem, or essay) that includes both something that makes you angry and something that brings you joy. You might find that the two are connected in some way, or perhaps they’re aspects of the same place/experience/memory. You might also find that they’re two completely different things, of course. When you write, try to provide detail for the reader so that they can experience it alongside you, and also try to write from a place of feeling the emotion.

 
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