Description
Poetry. Fiction. Drama. South Asian American Studies. "Monica Mody's KALA PANI is an allegorical screenplay that's both playful and terrifying. KALA PANI begins in a familiar, stripped down setting: a stage, actors, a Godotian tree as prop. But soon the Beckett allusions fray into the Boschian as the play embarks on a hallucinatory, postcolonial and tech-riven romp into the deprived lives of World Travelers. These world travelers (aka, Migrants? Writers? Revolutionaries? Insurgents?) are marooned on a colony island and spin tales such as the story of two sisters, Othershape, and Sameshape. KALA PANI is packed with stories-within-stories and voices that range from officialese to rebellious neologistic song: 'the blubs squeezed themselves into a phalanx of pulped fury.' With each scene, you descend into stranger circles of hell and hope. KALA PANI encompasses plenitude; it is uncomfortable, startling, timeless, and ultimately original."—Cathy Park Hong
Author Bio
Monica Mody is the author of KALA PANI (1913 Press, 2013) and two cross-genre chapbooks. Her poetry also appears in Poetry International, The Indian Quarterly, Eleven Eleven, Boston Review, Mission at Tenth, and Yes Poetry, among other places. She has been the recipient of the Nicholas Sparks Postgraduate Writer-in-Residence Prize from the University of Notre Dame, Naropa's Zora Neale Hurston Award, and the Toto Funds the Arts Award for Creative Writing. Her doctoral dissertation on a decolonial feminist consciousness for South Asian borderlands, utilizing multiple genres, was awarded the Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology. Monica holds a PhD in East West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame, and is a Bachelor of Arts and Law from the National Law School of India University. She was born in Ranchi, India
Author City: SAN FRANCISCO, CA USA