Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
A session with two debut novels that address the self as both subject and mystery: fragmented, remembered, reassembled and reinvented. Compelling new writers Gurnaik Johal and Pia Ghosh-Roy navigate the shifting terrains of inheritance and interiority in their works, Saraswati, Mongrel and And I Am the Arrow, each tracing the search for self in distinct and resonant ways. In conversation with Maya Jaggi, they confront who we are, what we inherit, and what we choose to leave unsaid.
Gurnaik Johal is a writer from West London and an Observer Best New Novelist 2025. His 2022 collection, We Move, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Tata Literature Live! Prize, with its opening story receiving the Galley Beggar Short Story Prize. His debut novel, Saraswati, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.
Pia Ghosh-Roy grew up in Calcutta, India, and now lives in Cambridge, UK. She worked in advertising as a copywriter for over a decade before turning to fiction. She is the recipient of the 2017 Hamlin Garland Award and the 2019 Cagibi Macaron Prize, and has been both short- and longlisted for the Brighton Prize, the Bath Short Story Award, the Berlin Writing Prize, and the Fish Short Story Prize. And I Am the Arrow is her debut novel.
Maya Jaggi is an award-winning writer and cultural journalist. She is a contributing art critic for the Financial Times, chair of the judges for the EBRD Literature Prize, and a former arts writer and fiction critic for The Guardian. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she holds degrees from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics. Her introduction to Namita Gokhale’s reissued novel Paro: Dreams of Passion was published in 2025.
Follow us on –
Website - jlflitfest.org
Facebook - facebook.com/JLFInternational
YouTube - youtube.com/@JLFInternational
Instagram - instagram.com/jlfinternational
X - twitter.com/JLFLitfest
#literature #writers
A session with two debut novels that address the self as both subject and mystery: fragmented, remembered, reassembled and reinvented. Compelling new writers Gurnaik Johal and Pia Ghosh-Roy navigate the shifting terrains of inheritance and interiority in their works, Saraswati, Mongrel and And I Am the Arrow, each tracing the search for self in distinct and resonant ways. In conversation with Maya Jaggi, they confront who we are, what we inherit, and what we choose to leave unsaid.
Gurnaik Johal is a writer from West London and an Observer Best New Novelist 2025. His 2022 collection, We Move, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Tata Literature Live! Prize, with its opening story receiving the Galley Beggar Short Story Prize. His debut novel, Saraswati, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.
Pia Ghosh-Roy grew up in Calcutta, India, and now lives in Cambridge, UK. She worked in advertising as a copywriter for over a decade before turning to fiction. She is the recipient of the 2017 Hamlin Garland Award and the 2019 Cagibi Macaron Prize, and has been both short- and longlisted for the Brighton Prize, the Bath Short Story Award, the Berlin Writing Prize, and the Fish Short Story Prize. And I Am the Arrow is her debut novel.
Maya Jaggi is an award-winning writer and cultural journalist. She is a contributing art critic for the Financial Times, chair of the judges for the EBRD Literature Prize, and a former arts writer and fiction critic for The Guardian. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she holds degrees from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics. Her introduction to Namita Gokhale’s reissued novel Paro: Dreams of Passion was published in 2025.
Follow us on –
Website - jlflitfest.org
Facebook - facebook.com/JLFInternational
YouTube - youtube.com/@JLFInternational
Instagram - instagram.com/jlfinternational
X - twitter.com/JLFLitfest
#literature #writers
