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Preti Taneja
PRETI TANEJA is a writer and activist, and Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, UK. Her novel WE THAT ARE YOUNG (Galley Beggar Press) won the UK’s Desmond Elliott Prize, and was listed for awards including the Folio Prize, Republic of Consciousness Prize (UK), the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize (India) and Europe’s premier award for a work of world literature, the Prix Jan Michalski. It has been translated into several languages and is published in the USA by AA Knopf. Her new book, AFTERMATH on the language of trauma, terror, prison and abolition is part of the Undelivered Lecturers series from Transit Books USA, and will be published in the UK by And Other Stories in April 2022.


Articles Available Online


Order, Order

Essay

December 2021

Preti Taneja

Essay

December 2021

‘INQUESTS INTO THE DEATHS ARISING FROM THE FISHMONGERS’ HALL AND LONDON BRIDGE TERROR ATTACK CASE MANAGEMENT’1   with asides, insertions, questions and other patterns...

Fiction

Issue No. 30

HOTEL STATIONARY (AND THIS IS THAT)

Preti Taneja

Fiction

Issue No. 30

And the night John Berger died, I, Maria, pale shadow, the youngest sister of Sabine, was walking the city....

And the night John Berger died, I, Maria, pale shadow, the youngest sister of Sabine, was walking the city And the gallery stayed open late for the last hours of Abstract Expressionism And I ducked into a bookshop to take a call, then stayed for two more hours, browsing And bought a copy of Float by Anne Carson, which I had seen at a friend’s place the night prior And with it bought a book I already had, as homage to a writer I desire And knowing she will never know And read the opening of the white copy with the blue writing of Secondhand Time And could not carry it with me And walked back the way I had come And remembered the boys and men I have kissed, standing on Hungerford Bridge And under the bridge And by the river And again And inside nothing And looked at the neon reflections And saw the buses and cars float over the Thames, while couples embraced below And retraced my steps to a hotel room, where the lights around the mirror make me look dirt pretty And the intimacy kit costs £20 And thought of Sabine, and the tits-out girl she used to be And her men in my hands, on her pages, brown-skinned, their taste And now And a mother of three, the number announces her wealth in her class And value And began to feel grown-up and older And believe I have never known her And care less about her And hurt at the thought life cannot fix death And is it enough to say I am? And I spy And patterns repeating And her children grow up And the dark river shivers next to the lights of the city, tiger stripes on water And inky black but working in pencil And this brings its own temptation for erasure And the mark of resistance And love the possibility of erasure And hurt for the house of love And hate brown bruises more than black hair And cut out pink shapes and pin them to canvas And drink

Contributor

February 2020

Preti Taneja

Contributor

February 2020

PRETI TANEJA is a writer and activist, and Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, UK. Her...

In conversation: Preti Taneja and Gina Apostol

Feature

February 2020

Gina Apostol

Preti Taneja

Feature

February 2020

Adelaide, Writers Week, March 2019. It was 41 degrees, and it was the furthest I have ever flown. I was standing at the fringes...

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fiction

November 2015

Wolves

Jeon Sungtae

TR. Sora Kim-Russell

fiction

November 2015

The Chief   The sound of the bell for the closing of the temple gate reaches my ears. I...

Art

May 2014

The Interzone and Dexter Dalwood

Sarah Hegenbart

Dexter Dalwood

Art

May 2014

‘Burroughs in Tangier’ (2005) has captivated me ever since its display in the 2010 Turner Prize Exhibition. The work...

feature

November 2014

Every Night is Like a Disco: Iraq 2003

Paul Currion

feature

November 2014

That day at Kassim’s, there was no music. There was almost no sound at all, not even the echoes...

 

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