Muse Of The Month July 2016: Inspiration From Samhita Arni

Posted: July 1, 2016

Each month this year, we host a writing theme – the Muse Of The Month, with a ‘writing cue’ from a contemporary female author of Indian origin. The 5 best entries get published here!

What you need to do for July 2016

Step 1. Read the writing cue (which is either a direct quote from the featured author, or a quote from one of their works, mentioned down below) and get inspired.

Step 2. Write your own story/poem/narrative/essay/piece based on the cue. You could use it as the opening line, the closing sentence, or somewhere in between! You could even choose not to use it anywhere in your story – just write a story using the cue as a prompt. (And the ‘story’ can be fictional – or not – as you wish).

Step 3. Send your work to us. Please email it to [email protected] with ‘Muse of the month – July 2016’ in the subject line, and your story as a word/txt attachment. Do include the name we should use if we publish it, and a brief introduction of yourself (2-3 lines) in the mail.

Please note: Given the number of entries received, we won’t be able to respond to each, but every single entry is being read through very carefully and is much appreciated.

Deadlines

Please send in your stories by 14th July, Thursday, 3 p.m. IST. The 5 best stories will be published on Women’s Web between the 18th to 22nd July, one on each day.

Rules

The material should be previously unpublished elsewhere. (Copyright stays with you and you’re free to subsequently publish it elsewhere).

Keep it between 250 and 2000 words. (Please keep this in mind; in past editions, we have had to disqualify some good entries purely due to word count issues).

Please avoid typing the story as inline text. Send it as an attachment only.

Prizes

The 5 best entries will each win a Flipkart voucher worth Rs 250. Plus, there will be 10 overall winners at the end of 2016 from among these winners!

Muse of the month (July 2016)

Samhita Arni – As a kid, Samhita loved reading and listening to stories from Indian and Greek mythologies. She made her own little notebooks to draw and write, drawing from the stories she had heard from her grandmother, and those that she had read – reading anything and everything she could get her hands on.

A child sensation, Samhita Arni tasted success at an early age of eight when her first book The Mahabharata- A Child’s View (1996) with self-drawn illustrations accompanying the story sold 50,000 copies worldwide and was published in seven languages. It won her the Elsa Morante Literary Award, commendations from Spanish Ministry of Culture and German Academy for Youth Literature and Media.

Her second book, a graphic novel, Sita’s Ramayana, illustrated by the illustrious Patua artist, Moyna Chitrakar, was on New York Times bestseller list in 2011. Her latest book, The Missing Queen, a speculative-fiction mythological thriller has been making waves. She has also contributed to the feminist anthology Eat The Sky, Drink The Ocean.

Samhita lived in different countries that include Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Italy and USA while growing up. She has studied in United World College, Italy and majored in Religion and Film Studies from Mount Holyoke, USA.