“I have stories to tell, and I want to work at telling them well with good writing.”
—Anand Karnad
A member of the Writers’ League since 2024, Anand lives in the San Antonio, TX area.
Scribe: Welcome, writer! Tell us — what do you write?
Anand Karnad: Literary fiction.
Scribe: If you could choose one author to blurb your book, who would it be, and what would you want it to say?
AK: Marilynne Robinson. “This is a writer writing against the grain. My kind of writer.”
Scribe: You have one book you’re allowed to push onto all of your friends, and they’re forced to read it to remain your friend — which one would you choose?
AK: John McPhee’s The Survival of the Bark Canoe, for its sublime prose, history, and the art of paddling a canoe.
Scribe: Tell us your WLT story.
AK: Jan Kilby (a Writing Consultant, and a dear friend) recommended I attend the Agents & Editors Conference in Austin. I did. The Pitch Lab was inspiring. One Pitch resulted in a request for 5 pages of my manuscript–and now I am fired up to revise and keep trying to land an Agent and get my story published.
Scribe: Where do you see your writing taking you (or you taking it) in the future?
AK: I have stories to tell, and I want to work at telling them well with good writing. I have a book ready now, and one book in the incubator.
Scribe: Here at the WLT, we love sharing book recommendations. What’s one book that has come out within the past few years that you couldn’t put down? (Bonus points if the book is Texas related!)
AK: Mr. Texas by Lawrence Wright. I want to be like him when I grow up–equally at home in non-fiction and fiction, and riotously funny.
Scribe: Is there anything else about you that you would like to share with the world? An opportunity for blatant self-promotion!
AK: Abraham Verghese (The Covenant of Water) is my soulmate and inspires me every day.