Golchakkar: Dispatches from Australia

Golchakkar Series - The October panel of our virtual literary talk featured Christopher Raja and Roanna Gonsalves: Dispatches from Australia.

- Golchakkar Series

The Chakkar welcomes you to our reading series, GOLCHAKKAR. Every month, we will host an online panel discussion of Indian artists in conversation with the world.

Dispatches from Australia: Christopher Raja and Roanna Gonsalves

This month on Golchakkar, we were joined by Christopher Raja and Roanna Gonsalves to speak of their experiences as writers of Indian heritage from Australia: How has the time in Australia affected their writing and translated to a unique literary experience. The session was hosted by world traveler, polyglot, and author Kiran Bhat.

Participants

CHRISTOPHER RAJA is the author of the memoir, Into the Suburbs: A Migrant's Story (UQP, 2020) that was highly commended in this year's National Biography Award. He co-authored the play The First Garden with Natasha Raja, which was performed in botanical gardens and published by Currency Press in 2012. His debut novel, The Burning Elephant, was published in 2015 (Giramondo). It was written with the assistance of an Australia Council New Work grant. Raja lived in the Northern Territory for 15 years and has been twice shortlisted for its Chief Minister’s Book of the Year award. Raja migrated from Calcutta to Melbourne in 1986. He is the 2021 UTS Copyright Agency New Writer's Fellow. He lives in Alice Springs and Melbourne.

ROANNA GONSALVES is the award-winning author of The Permanent Resident (UWAP) published in India and South Asia as Sunita De Souza Goes To Sydney (Speaking Tiger). Her four-part radio series On the tip of a billion tongues, commissioned and broadcast by ABC RN’s Earshot program, is a portrayal of contemporary India through its multilingual writers. Gonsalves is a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Endeavour Award and The Bridge Awards’ inaugural Varuna—Cove Park Writing Residency Scotland. She serves on the Board of Writing NSW and works as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at UNSW Sydney. Gonsalves was born and raised in Mumbai and now lives in Sydney. For more information see https://roannagonsalves.com.au/.

KIRAN BHAT is an Indian-American novelist, short-story writer, and educator. He is the author of We of the Forsaken World, Afora Adentro, Autobiografia, Kiran Speaks, Tirugaatha, and more. An avid world traveler, polyglot, and digital nomad, he has currently travelled to over 130 countries, lived in 18 different places, and speaks 12 languages. He currently lives in Melbourne.

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