At the Youth Festival that kicked off last Friday with “Young Authors”, journalist-historian and author of Spy Princess , Shrabani Basu (see picture), conducted the conversation between young, first time writers like Advaita Kala, Ankush Saikia and Amandeep Sandhu at the India Habitat Centre. Kala’s book Almost Single is the city’s hippest bestseller while Saikia’s book Jet City Woman was released last month. Sandhu debuted at the event with Sepia Leaves, a touching memoir of his childhood and life in a broken home. Through their letters to each other, a family keeps abreast with each other’s lives. “The readers are invited to a personal portrait of a family, of a woman who’s lost her mind and a man shackled to his fate and of their child, the one who has written this book,” said Sandhu, who joked that his book had been categorised as fiction because he wasn’t famous enough for anyone to be interested in the story of his life.

The three authors read out extracts from their books and later talked about the various themes and personal experiences that inspired their books. “The first book is always a little autobiographical, one looks into oneself for reference,” said Basu, although Saikia staunchly denied that his book possesses any autobiographical overtones. Kala spoke about her book, the material for which she gleaned from her own life. “What the single, urban, working woman experiences is now almost a global phenomenon,” said Kala who now has foreign publishers interested in her book. “Apart from the Indian contexts, they feel that the book will be able to reach out to women in the West as well”.