Paro Anand writes for children, young adults and adults. She won the Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puruskar in 2017 for her anthology Wild Child (now published as Like Smoke). She has spoken about and written extensively on children’s literature in India. She headed the National Centre for Children’s Literature, The National Book Trust, India, the apex body for children’s literature in India. She also runs a podcast on HubHopper called Literature in Action, and was an invitee to the India Conference at the Harvard Business School in 2018. She was awarded the Kalinga Karubaki Award for fearless writing in 2019. She is well-known for her work with children in difficult circumstances including those impacted by violence in Kashmir and has written extensively on the subject. Facebook-@authorparoanand, Twitter-@ParoAnand
One of the most celebrated Children’s writers, Ms Paro Anand gets a warm welcome from the anchor and soon after, she takes over and begins with the topic of how she managed to write every day before the pandemic. In her words, Ms Anand had never been through writer’s block because she borrowed stories from real-life instances of the children she usually spends a lot of time with. Ms Anand talks about how she went through writer’s block for the first time in her life during the pandemic because she could not spend time with children and that meant she was unable to borrow their stories. Ms Anand has spent a lot of time with children in the zones of conflict and trouble like in Kashmir. Initially, Ms Paro decided to wait until the pandemic was over to start writing again, but soon she realised that the pandemic wasn’t coming to a close anytime soon. Eventually, with the help of her daughter who was working with families in the slums of Mumbai, Ms Anand wrote 19 stories about the times in covid in her new book. As the session rolls on, Ms Anand talks about her dilemma regarding the target audience of the book, etc and soon after, the session comes to a close.