Sushma Joshi
| Sushma Joshi | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 26, 1973 Kathmandu, Nepal |
| Occupation | Writer filmmaker |
| Nationality | Nepali |
| Genre | Fiction and non-fiction |
| Notable works | End of the World |
| Website | |
| www |
|
Sushma Joshi (Nepali: सुष्मा जोशी) (born May 26, 1973) is a Nepali writer and filmmaker based in Kathmandu, Nepal.
End of the World, her book of short stories, was long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award[1] in 2009. "The Prediction" was published in 2013. Art Matters, a book of essays about contemporary art, was supported by the Alliance Française de Katmandou.
Her non-fiction reportage has appeared in Utne Reader, Ms. magazine, Z Net, The Irrawaddy, Himal Southasian, Bertelsmann Future Challenges, The Kathmandu Post, Nation Weekly magazine and other publications. In 2004, she was part of the staff at the Nation Weekly magazine (Kathmandu.)
Since 1997, Joshi has worked and consulted with international organizations working in social change and human rights, including the Harvard School of Public Health (Harvard University), UNDP, UNICEF, Integrated Center for Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Chemonics/USAID, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Contents
Plays
Her play, I Killed My Best Friend's Father, about two teenagers who survive the civil conflict in Nepal, was stage-read at the Arcola Theatre in London as part of the Kali TalkBack Festival[2] on December 8, 2012.
Film
Sound of Silence (1997) her first documentary, was screened at the New Asian Currents[3] at the Yamagata Documentary Film Festival. Water (2000) was screened on the Q and A with Riz Khan on CNN International, and the UN World Water Forum in Kyoto. The Escape (2006),[4] a short about a teacher targeted by rebels, was accepted to the Berlinale Talent Campus. Supportive Men is a 30-minute short about men helping with housework in southern Nepal. Her films have also been screened at Flickerfest Film Festival in Sydney, Vancouver Nepali Film Festival, Himalayan Film Festival in London and others.
Art
In 2004, Joshi had a solo exhibit of her paintings at Gallery Nine. The exhibit was of 26 figurative paintings depicting the state of Nepal during the civil conflict.
Joshi's multimedia installation titled Jumla: A cyberphoto installation was accepted to the Eighth International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA) at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997.
Creative history
Education and influences
Joshi was born and grew up in Kathmandu. From age 8 to 12, she studied in Dowhill School, Kurseong, in the district of Darjeeling. She finished her education at Mahendra Bhawan and Siddhartha Vanasthali High School in Kathmandu.
Joshi graduated from Brown University in the USA in 1996 with a BA in international relations. She also took workshops in fiction, autobiography and poetry, and classes in documentary production with the artist Tony Cokes. From 1999–2002, she was in graduate school at the New School of Social Research in New York, where she received an MA in anthropology. During the summers, she attended The Breadloaf School of English at Middlebury College, Vermont, and received another MA in English Literature in 2005. At Bread Loaf, she studied playwriting with the 1998–1999 Obie Award winning playwright Dare Clubb, as well as theatre directing and acting with Alan and Carol MacVey.
Joshi received a writer fellowship to attend the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 2000. In 2005, she received a research and writing fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. She was awarded a residency at the Bellagio Center, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, in Bellagio, Italy, in 2006. Joshi was a featured writer at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in 2009. In 2011, she was an Asia fellow and traveled to Thailand and Burma to do research on a book about Nepali migrants, with support from the Asian Scholarship Foundation.
Joshi was a jury member of the Indigenous Film Festival in Nepal in 2009. She was also a member of a three-judge panel for the film competition on global warming sponsored by the British Council and Department for International Development in Kathmandu in 2010.
Selected published articles and stories
- "In the Pool Lies Two Dead Bodies", Republica, January 2016
- "Kachin-Gorkhas", Setopati, December 2015
- "A Visit to the Vihar", Setopati, December 2015
- "La Scoperta dell' alto Lama", El Ghibli, June 2013
- "Soft Things", Mascara, November 2012
- "The Gorkhalis of Myitkyina", Himal South Asia, October 2011
- "The Discovery of the High Lama", East of the Web, 2011
- "The Colonel Gets a Visitor", Kyoto Journal, January 2009
- "Betrayal", Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Issue 3, May 2008
- "Cheese", East of the Web, 2005
- "Waiting for Rain", Samar, Issue 13, Winter/Spring 2000
- "Cheese", Buran, Il Cibo, February 2008 (Italian translation)
- "Pho Mai", Viet Bao, 2005 (Vietnamese translation)
- "Ngày tận thế (truyện ngắn)" (Vietnamese translation)
- "'Red pole' justice in Nepal", Eureka Street, Volume 16 No.6, June 12, 2006
- "War-Torn Shangri-La", Ms., Summer 2006
- "Short Takes: News from all over", Utne Reader September 2006
- "Women’s Day in Nepal", Hinduism Today, September/October 2000
- "De smaak van vroeger", Ode magazine, 27 July/August 1999 issue[dead link]
See also
References
External links
- The Global and the Local - Joshi's blog
- Read the World - PROPORTIONALLY! 100 Books from Around the World 2014
- Review of "The End of the World" by Sumati Sivasiamphai, Guru Magazine, Friday Supplement of the Bangkok Post 08/2011
- An Affair to Remember, Janet O'Neefe, Garuda Indonesia 11/2009
- Carnival Lights up Ubud Fest, Jakarta Post 10/11/2009
- Words Amidst Beauty, Lee Su kim, Malaysia Star October 18, 2009
- Filling the Gap, Sushma Joshi starts a new beginning for English medium literature in Nepal, WAVE Magazine July 2009
- Book Review: And, Of The Word, Deepak Adhikari, Nepal Monitor 2009
