As part of the fiction program at the CUNY Writers’ Institute, along with 16 other writers (read bios here), we meet two nights of the week to workshop our writing. One of those places is the conference room at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Yes, it is just as gangster as it sounds. Some of us are writing short stories, others are workshopping novels, and then there are writing exercises thrown in to keep us on our toes. The process of deadlines, reading and critiquing other writers’ work, as well as hearing their feedback, and of course the feedback from the editors we’re working with this semester, is really quite invigorating. Although you can’t tell from the image on the left, Matt Weiland is quite…
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Posts from the “Musings” Category
Music Video Parody “Babas in Paris” With Sensational Oklahoma Rapper, AnoopDawg
Navdeep
Posted on October 12, 2012
For two weeks in August, I attended an incredibly intense Gurmukhi workshop (Sidak 2012) through the Sikh Research Institute after I initially read about it at TheLangarHall. What made the whole experience so wonderful was of course the well organized curriculum and instructors, but a lot of it also had to do with the other Sidakers there, who I found incredibly entertaining and welcoming. There is a video currently making its rounds on youtube (above) that was conceived and created at Sidak, the result of a running joke involving fake Babas or “Holy Men.” It has already amassed over 10,000 hits and I imagine it will be higher by the time you read this: When I watch the video, I don’t think of it…
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Categories: Musings
Tagged: Babas in Paris, musings, Sidak, Sidak 2012, Sikh Research Institution, Sikhri
Get Inspired By the Dog Days of Summer: Short-Story Competition with the Paris Review, PEN, and Author Hettie Jones
Navdeep
Posted on August 26, 2012
“Dog Days” is an expression used to characterize the last weeks of a glorious summer, where work, school, and other responsibilities are looming. Some claim the phrase is originally Latin, others say Sirius, the Dog Star believed to control warm weather, is mentioned in ancient Egyptian texts, just before the flooding of the Nile. In either case, I think we can all agree that the end of summer sucks. Fortunately, the Paris Review, PEN, author Hettie Jones, The Standard, and Warby Parker are hooking it up with a 1000 word short-story competition inspired by these lazy, awful, gloomy, dog days of summer. The contest is due via email on the same day as the Brooklyn Book Festival and my wife’s birthday (Sona Charaipotra) –…
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It’s our first official day at Sidak 2012, where I’m attempting to study the intricacies of grammatical structure in the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh Holy Book. I’ve been really impressed by how smoothly and welcoming everyone has been, and some amazing musical talent by some of the other students. At about noon, Tarundeep Singh, who is also in my Gurmukhi course, took out his iPhone and announced that there had been a shooting at the Wisconsin Gurdwara. He found out about it from someone in India who had texted him the news. And that became the topic of conversation as we all gathered at the langar hall to eat. Everyone with laptops, iPhones, and iPads were scrambling to try to find out information…
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Categories: Musings
Tagged: Oakcreek, Sidak, Sidak 2012, sikh research institute, Sikhri
As we drove through Provincetown in Cape Cod to get to the Fine Arts Work Center, where I received a scholarship to attend a playwriting workshop with Melinda Lopez, I was immediately enamoured with the place. It is absolutely beautiful, with quaint, brightly coloured cottages lining the streets, and you can literally smell the seaside as you drive around. We turned down Pearl Street and pulled into our parking spot (#5!), checked into our apartment, and I promptly collapsed onto the bed for about two hours, before Orientation started downstairs. Doing the Cliff Walk and touring mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, as well as stuffing ourselves with clams in butter sauce at Antonio’s Restaurant was hard work. There are so many things I love…
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Or rather, the only thing about science. I know that paper burns at 451 degrees (or he convinced me that this was true through Fahrenheit 451). I haven’t read anything by Ray Bradbury in a number of years. Unlike many, I never read him in school, but like many, I have a very emotional connection to his work. It has subtly influenced how I think about many things. I was never that enthused with his novels, but his short-stories had me by the throat from beginning to end. I’ve read many of his short-stories countless times over the years. I remember reading The Illustrated Man when I was about 13 and had just moved to America. My mother had just discovered the joy of…
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I have scoured the internet, bookstores, scholastic journals and databases for exhaustive information to try and understand the reality of the events of 1984, as well as the unique nature of this kind of oppression at the hands of the state. The following is a glimpse of what I deem to be useful, as far as my research is concerned. I am sure I have skipped many books and articles, so please leave a comment or contact me if you feel there are any sources or areas that are amiss: Bits and pieces of everything: Wikipedia While I sternly warn my students never to use this source for any of their papers, it has some surprisingly good cursory information. For an overview of the…
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Tagged: 1984, books on 1984, Navdeep Singh Dhillon, resources on 1984
In 1985, I was about seven years old and living in Crawley, a small town 40 minutes by tube from London. I can’t remember exactly what we were all watching. We were all very particular about what we watched as a family: Black Adder, Only Fools and Horses, Monty Python, or Lenny Henry. The phone rang and my mum picked it up. She said very little, which is very unlike her. She loves to gab. My dad got up from the sofa and went over to give my mum a cuddle. Definitely very unlike him. Earlier that day, my dad had been upset and livid as he heard a news story on the radio about militants gunning down a middle-aged woman and her two…
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Categories: Musings
Tagged: 1984, Navdeep Singh Dhillon
Kony 2012: Potato, Potatoe; Uganda, Sudan, Rush Limbaugh is Not a Racist, and Other Minor Details
Navdeep
Posted on March 9, 2012
There has been intense and not undeserved criticism against the Kony 2012 video on twitter, facebook, all over the web, and it is, as they say “trending.” That whole Occupy Wallstreet is old news. This is the new thing. The 28-minute film posted on Vimeo brings to light the Kony 2012 movement that aims to arrest Joseph Kony, leader of the L.R.A. : the Lords Resistance Army, called a “Christian Movement” by Joseph Kony, who uses child soldiers to retain his power and uses them to rape, kill, and mutilate, while many girls are forced into sex slavery. The L.R.A.is no more Christian than Al Qaida is Muslim, but the Lord’s name is used, and I think it can be generally agreed that it…
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Categories: Musings
Tagged: Navdeep Singh Dhillon
The Epic Battle Continues: Is Star Wars or Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld,” Fantasy or Science Fiction?
Navdeep
Posted on November 16, 2011
Last week, two of my School of Visual Art students almost got into a fist fight during class discussion. Alright, that is not entirely true. Nor is it partially true. It was all very civilized and uneventful, although chairs may have been thrown had I left the room and didn’t reign the discussion back to its original purpose: dissecting the narrative structure of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Somehow, during the course of our discussion, we ended up having a bit of a quibble over Star Wars being boxed into the Fantasy or Science Fiction genre. Or possibly both of these genres. We started discussing the basics of story structure from Aristotle’s “Poetics,” and predictable horror films and romantic comedies where plot and characters were clichéd,…
