About

Tashan Mehta is a novelist whose interest lies in form and the fantastical, and how a dialogue between these elements may offer us new and collective ways of seeing.

 

Her debut novel, The Liar’s Weave, was published in 2017 and shortlisted for the Prabha Khaitan Woman’s Voice Award. Her short stories have been anthologised in Magical Women and the Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction: Volume II. She was part of the 2021 and 2015 Sangam House International Writers’ Residency (India) and was British Council Writer-in-Residence at Anglia Ruskin University (UK) in 2018.

 

In 2019, she participated in FIELDWORK 0.2, a multidisciplinary residency that explored alternative infrastructures for the future. She was commissioned by the Barbican (UK) to create an artefact that captures the essence of this experience; On Unknown Things was published in 2021. Recently, she was invited to CERN IdeaSquare (Switzerland, of The Large Hadron Collider fame) alongside other writers and scientists to develop stories that can communicate new-age technologies to the public.

 

As developmental editor and book doctor, she has worked with Scribe Media (US) and Amazon Publishing (US) to develop both non-fiction and fiction manuscripts into the best shape possible. She has been mentor at the Bound Residency (India) thrice, where she has coached new writers on how to elevate their fiction. She’s also lectured on new forms of ideological storytelling, including speculative fiction’s role in shaping the future.

 

Tashan studied at the universities of Warwick and Cambridge. Her second novel, Mad Sisters of Esi, was published in the Indian subcontinent in 2023 and won the Auther Awards for Best Novel, as well as the Subjective Chaos Kind of Award for Best Fantasy. It will be published in North America in 2025.