Do you write to dissent?

Eunice De Souza

Helter Skelter brought in fresh air to the Mumbai literary scene six years ago when Arun Kale launched the magazine for fiction online. It was a time when social media had not taken its present form yet, neither Kindle nor ebooks had made it big and one wondered if an online literary magazine was indeed an idea that would work.

Meena Kandasamy

After five editions with all hard copies getting sold out apart from the traffic on the web, many questions have been answered. Every year, aspiring writers and eager readers look forward to this time of the year when Helter Skelter opens for entries and subsequently, is out with the anthology edited by eminent literary names like Anjum Hasan and Janice Pariat.

The theme for the short fiction and poetry entry is dissent. It, Kale says, can come at any point in the story but there needs to be a connection.

He adds, "As with all the themes we've had, we felt that it would yield interesting results in terms of the submissions we receive. Dissent in its various forms." The editors of this issue are poets Meena Kandasamy and Eunice De Souza.

Kale says that apart from stories and poems selected by the judges and the accompanying artwork, the anthology will also carry interesting collaborations with creative people in India around the same theme. Kale is also hosting a workshop.

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