The longlist for the first anthology collection by an independent South Asian publishing house from Bradford has been announced.
Fox and Windmill is a publishing company set up by two postgraduate students, Habiba Desai and Sara Razzaq from the Univesity of Huddersfield in March of last year.
The duo first met six years when working at the Bradford Literature Festival in 2016.
Taking the plunge during the second lockdown, the English grads launched their search for submissions for their first anthology collection, Into the Wilds, last year.
The publishing company was set up to bridge the gap in literature and publishing, with the aim of independently distributing authentic northern South Asian voices, without the need for a literary agent.
Co-founder of the publishing company, Habiba Desai, said: “We are so honoured and proud to reveal the longlist of short stories and poems for our anthology Into the Wilds.
“We didn’t anticipate the high volume of entries that we received and we were blown away by the quality of the submissions.
“It shows us how important it is to have representation and validates the importance of having an accessible platform to share your work.
“It’s always a scary process giving someone else your work to read so thank you to everyone who sent in a poem or story. We’d like to offer our congratulations to all those longlisted.”
Twenty talented poets have been longlisted for the anthology collection and 16 writers who hope to get their short stories published.
However, only six poems and six short stories will be published in the collection.
The winners will have their work published alongside, Saima Mir, award-winning writer and author of The Khan. Sairish Hussain, author of the Costa shortlisted debut novel The Family Tree and award-winning poet Zaffar Kunial.
Fox and Windmill will be doing an Instagram Live on Monday 24 January at 7pm to give some of the writers a chance to read their work to an audience.
The collection is expected to be published later this year.
The longlist for poetry is:
Alysha Mahmood – Anxiety
Amaleena Damle – Agraha
Bushra Sheikh – Hijab Diaries
Farah Parvez – Let’s Make Up
Hasana Tulain – Back Stabber
Huda Siddiqi – I Come From
Jay Mitra – Sounds About White
Karishma Sangtani – Dadi Maa and I enter the Buffy verse
Mariam Chaudhry – The Season of Pomegranates
Mariam Karolia – May 11th 1985
Mohammed Barber – Wheat Stalks on the Wall
Mussarat Rahman – Grandad Arrival
Nahida Musabbir – Brownation
Raeesa Bano – Sometimes
Reshma Ruia – How To Belong
Shana Jasani – Demons
Sharan Sandhu – Dalit Daughter
Sujana Crawford – Morning walk around Boudha Stupa
Syra Shakir – The Forced Silence
Zara Sehar – Synonyms for Paradise
The longlist for short stories are:
Dipika Mummery – The Shape of a Girl
Fara Butt – The Change
Ulka Karandikar – On the Blob
Taslin Pollock – Insert Worse Fear
Swapna Sanchita – In the Eyes
Shabina Aslam – Motherland
Sarah M Jassat – A White Boy is Looking At You
Sara Summun Khan – Across this new divide
Sangeeta Mulay – Just the three of us
Samina Hussain – The Trousseau
Sabrina Khan – The Beginning of the End
Niliam McGrath – A Quiet Place to Live
Mousumi Kanjilal – When the World Sleeps
Majida Begum – The Guesthouse
Ismail Karolia – Passenger
Ibrahim Lakhanpal – The Geography Teacher
The shortlist will be announced on 31 January 2022.
