PRETI TANEJA
WE THAT ARE YOUNG is the award winning debut novel by Preti Taneja.
It is published by the visionary GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS in the UK, by AA KNOPF in the USA and by the most radical publishers and editors around the world.
WE THAT ARE YOUNG won the Desmond Elliott Prize in 2018 and was nominated for several international awards. It was an Amazon book of the month in August 2018, a top 10 Book of the Year in The Sunday Times, Book of the year in the Guardian, the Spectator, and a top 10 Literary Fiction Book of the Year in Library Journal. It is being made into a major international TV series by Gaumont US.
A TOP 10 FICTION BOOK OF THE DECADE - THE HINDU
'Powerful, engrossing... perfectly constructed, magnificently written.'
- Jim Crace, Chair of judges, the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018
Read about Preti's journey to publication here
Preti is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle.
She teaches Creative Writing in prisons for LEARNING TOGETHER, the national prison education programme.
As a New Generation Thinker, she broadcasts for Radio 3 and 4 on world literature and culture.
With Ben Crowe she co-founded ERA Films, a collective working on issues as diverse as Iraq’s refugee crisis, in Rwanda with survivors of the genocide and with women in slum areas of Nairobi, Kenya and on major interactive multimedia documentaries including on migrant workers' rights.
With Kristen Harrison of THE CURVED HOUSE, Preti co founded and edits VISUAL VERSE, the anthology of art and words, bringing the freshest new writing from around the world to a global audience.
She is a Contributing Editor for the multi-award winning independent press AND OTHER STORIES for which she accepts submissions of full manuscripts.
Preti's academic research is on cultural rights in conflict-affected zones. From 2017-19 she held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Warwick University researching translations of Shakespeare in conflict and postconflict areas worldwide.
Chair of judges for National Centre for Writing's DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2020
Judges Committee for the inaugural Orwell Prize in Political Fiction (2019)
Readings:
Preti has been invited to speak about WE THAT ARE YOUNG at festivals around the world including Adelaide Writer's Week, Hay Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Jaipur Literary Festival, Livres sur les Quais, Morges Switzerland, Brooklyn Book Festival, Kolkata Lit Fest, Kolkata Lit Meet, Hyderabad Lit Fest, Atta Galata Bangalore, Greenwich Book Fest (UK), Milton Keynes Literary Festival, Primadonna Festival (UK), Kenilworth Book Festival.
And in bookshop events including Shakespeare and Company (Paris), City Lights, (San Francisco), Politics and Prose (Washington DC), Elliott Bay Book Co (Seattle)
And in universitys including: Yale, Harvard (MIT), John's Hopkins, Vassar College, Cambridge, Newcastle, Dublin, with keynote addresses at the British Shakespeare Association Annual Conference (2019) and World Shakespeare Congress (2021). She will give a British Academy Lecture at Leeds University in 2021.
WRITER IN RESIDENCE:
SEAGULL BOOKS, KOLKATA (2020)
TIDE: TRAVEL and TRANSCULTURAL IDENTITY in the EARLY MODERN PERIOD, THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD (2020)
UNESCO Fellow in Prose Fiction - University of East Anglia (2019)
image by Rory O' Bryen