India’s award-winning flash fiction author Shalaka Kulkarni is all set to conduct a creative writing workshop called ‘Widening Your Perspective’ at the 4th Edition of Orange City Literature Festival, 2022. This workshop caters to anyone and everyone who wants to start their creative writing journey.
Shalaka has been writing since the age of 8. She will talk about how one can widen their perspective and get started with creative writing.
A whirlwind of crazy chaos, a dialogue in the digital world, and the first ray of the sun - ‘Shalaka’ is an Indian award-winning flash fiction author, TEDx speaker and global brand marketer.
Shalaka’s book Orenda is a collection of 52 stories based in modern India. It won “Book of the year - Reader’s Choice” at Kavishala Book Awards 2021 and was listed as #1 on Kindle under the short stories. She was invited as a speaker at Jaipur Literature Festival, Bangalore Lit fest, Pune International Lit Fest, Orange City Lit Fest and others.
Orenda has received an endorsement from a Sahitya Akademi award-winning author, Namita Gokhale and the foreword is written by critically acclaimed filmmaker, Manish Mundra.
She has been honoured with Women Disruptors 2021 and Corporate Comms & PR 30 under 30 (2022) and currently heads the Employer Brand and Communications for Angel One.
The workshop began with some words where in Shalaka gave some words to the audience and they had to make a sentence out of it and it was like a relay race or a rapid fire. Later the audience connected the dots and made a wonderful story out of these simple sentences. Towards the end, Shalaka shared some pictures on the PowerPoint and gave an assignment to the audience to write something about those pictures. In between the workshop, she also shares her personal experience of being In Mumbai and listening to conversations that people have and she sees stories everywhere.
The session with invitees Meghana Pant & Shalaka Kulkarni was extremely interesting. Discussion points during the session. “Boys Don't Cry” authored by Meghna Pant, is a gripping, compelling and courageous novel that takes you behind the closed doors of a modern Indian marriage. The author shared that she was inspired to write this book, which was based on her personal life experiences that she had gone through. The moderator presented her questions beautifully & overall the discussion within the audience to a strong grip. Meghna expressed her outlook that every couple, while deciding to marry/live life with their partner of choice, must be vigilant about every aspect & attribute of the opposite partner. She also added during the discussion that the expectations of proving masculinity on boys/men have a negative impact on them. They are actually isolating the young & teaching them to be emotionally stunted. A couple of youngsters from the audience during the last 5 minutes or so of the session, shared their experiences. Overall the perspectives on this topic were appreciated by everyone in the hall.