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THIRD ANNUAL IAAC LITERARY FESTIVAL
NYU KIMMEL CENTER, 60 WASHINGTON SQUARE SOUTH, NYC
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| OCTOBER 7-9, 2016 |
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| Sunday October 9, 2016.
3:45 pm – 4:45 pm |
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Session 4A -
Fiction: Mystery and Romance |
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Radha Vatsal, Falguni Kothari, Dhirendra Tiwari, Tamraparni Dasu in conversation with Parul Kapur Hinzen
Thrillers, romance, mystery & adventure entertain and hold you hostage to their stories. |
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| Radha Vatsal |
 Radha Vatsal is the author of A Front Page Affair, first in the Kitty Weeks Mystery Series, set in 1910s New York. She was born in Mumbai, India, and came to the United States to attend boarding school. She received her PhD from Duke University, where she focused on women and silent cinema. Her essays have appeared in the Smithsonianmag.com and the Atlantic.com. She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters. |
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| A Front Page Affair |
 The Lusitania has just been sunk, and headlines about a shooting at J.P. Morgan's mansion and the Great War are splashed across the front page of every newspaper. Capability "Kitty" Weeks would love nothing more than to report on the news of the day, but she's stuck writing about fashion and society gossip over on the Ladies' Page?until a man is murdered at a high society picnic on her beat.
Determined to prove her worth as a journalist, Kitty finds herself plunged into the midst of a wartime conspiracy that threatens to derail the United States' attempt to remain neutral?and to disrupt the privileged life she has always known.
Radha Vatsal's A Front Page Affair is the first book in highly anticipated series featuring rising journalism star Kitty Weeks. |
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| Falguni Kothari |
 Once upon a story...
I was born and bred in Mumbai, married young, had my children young, before my family moved to New York in the Spring of 2001. If anyone had asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, while growing up, I'd never in a million years have said, "an author." Honestly, I abhored writing...at least, the school version of it. But, I love stories. Always have, always will. I don't remember a time when I haven't been entertained by stories.
One of my fondest memories is of my grandmother and her masseuse (aka maalishwaalibai) telling me stories of my Gujarati heritage and mythic India. Anecdotes about gods and demons, heroes and epic battles were all too common a debate to wake to most mornings. What stood out, as I grew older and the stories grew more complex, was that both my grandmother and the maalishwaalibai even though they were more or less formally uneducated (neither one went beyond a very basic elementary school education), were telling me tales about women of legend. Women who'd broken the shackles of time, place and culture and become heroes in their own right. Women who just might've been the world's, certainly India's, first feminists. Women who respected and loved men who respected and loved them in turn.
Needless to say, the stories made an impression on me. And now that I've accidently (most fortunately) fallen (er, have been pushed by my mother) down the writer's rabbit hole, those are the stories I wish to tell: the forever kind. |
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| My Last Love Story |
 I,Simeen Desai, am tired of making lemonade with the lemons life has handed me.
Love is meant to heal wounds.
Love was meant to make my world sparkle and spin.
Love has ripped my life apart and shattered my soul.
I love my husband, and he loves me.
But Nirvaan is dying.
I love my husband. I want to make him happy.
But he is asking for the impossible.
I don't want a baby.
I don't want to make nice with Zayaan.
I don't want another chance at another love story. |
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| Dhirendra Tiwari |
 Dhirendra began his journey as a writer some twenty-five years ago and some twenty-thousand feet above the ground at the Scindia School, also where he finished his basic education. Dhirendra finished his Engineering in Mumbai; and Masters in Science from Houston, Texas. He is currently settled in New Jersey with his family. His debut novel Punk Sunk Love, was launched in May 2016 and has since featured several times in Amazon India's Top 50 hot-selling releases and on Crossword's bestsellers list. |
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| Punk Sunk Love |
Two men; two personalities; two slants of love; one destiny.
Roy’s tender heart is on a quest to find the holy grail of mankind - True love. But, the soft echo of feisty Monica’s whispering words - remember; remember; the sixth of September - will change everything, raining mayhem on him and everyone he touches.
Shammi, a serial monogamist, thinks love is an urban myth – a ridiculous creation of the feeble hearts. As awe-inspiring beautiful Sona brisk through his life, the sublime aura of her love brews a raging battle within him - a battle between his objectivity and his heart.
Smothered by the haunting causality of love, Shammi’s life spirals down a path of retribution against his own demons, and, Roy’s life is sunk in a deluge of inexplicable state of affairs. Facing imminent danger, and running out of options, Roy suddenly finds himself cornered and isolated. Roy’s only glimmer of hope is by helping Shammi pull out of the dark tunnels of his inner demons; transforming his retribution into redemption; healing his agony with hope; and swapping his wretchedness with swagger - the swagger of love. |
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| Tamraparni Dasu |
 T. Dasu is a published author of both nonfiction and fiction, including Spy, Interrupted. By day, Dasu is a research scientist working on problems in statistics, stream mining, and machine learning, which allow her to put her PhD in mathematical statistics to good use. She has spoken at a number of events and festivals including the Indo American Arts Council Literary Festival in NYC and The Fall for the Book Festival in VA. She has recently been interviewed by India Abroad, an eminent publication serving the Indian diaspora, and by ITV Gold the longest running Desi TV channel in the country. Learn more about T.Dasu and her work on her website at http://tamraparnidasu.com/. |
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| The Perfect Candidate |
 A fast-paced novel full of political intrigue, espionage, and romance, T. Dasu’s The Perfect Candidate (Book 2 of the Spy, Interrupted trilogy) weaves the themes of intercultural love and state secrets in a thrilling story of power and secrets. New England aristocrat and former spy Stephen Edward James and his wife Nina Sharma are about to take the first tentative steps of a race for a U.S. Senate seat in Stephen’s native Massachusetts. A malicious tracker, Dave Tyler, throws the campaign into chaos, jeopardizing Stephen’s marriage and driving one of his young, closeted staffers to the point of no return. Tyler will go to any lengths to discredit Stephen, setting off an ominous chain of events that leads Tyler to a frightening and unexpected turning point in his life.
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| Parul Kapur Hinzen |
 Parul Kapur Hinzen was born in Assam, India, where her father worked as an executive for the Burmah Oil Company. She took her first plane ride out of the Upper Assam jungle at eleven days old and spent her early childhood between Calcutta, New Delhi and Bombay. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was seven, living briefly in northern New Jersey before settling in Wilton, Connecticut. She received a BA in English Literature from Wesleyan University and an MFA from Columbia University. Returning to India, she worked for a year as a reporter for the city magazine Bombay, covering politics, social issues, personalities and the arts.
A journalist, literary critic and fiction writer, Parul was a press officer at the United Nations in New York and a freelance arts writer during a decade spent in Germany, France, England and Brazil. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The Wall Street Journal Europe, The New Yorker, Esquire, New York Newsday, Guernica, ARTnews, Art in America, The American Book Review and many other publications. She has published short fiction in Frank, Wascana Review, Allegheny Review and the anthology [Ex]tinguished & [Ex]tinct. In 2010, she founded the Books page at ArtsATL, Atlanta’s leading online arts publication, covering the city’s literary scene for four years. She was also a co-founder of the global voices program, showcasing a diversity of authors, at the Decatur Book Festival, the nation’s largest indie book festival.
Her first novel, Inside the Mirror, about twin sisters who dream of becoming artists in 1950s Bombay, was short-listed for the 2013 Horatio Nelson Prize for Fiction and awaits publication. She is at work on a second novel about an Indian family in turmoil in America.
Parul lives in Connecticut with her husband and son. |
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