How did “Muna in Barish” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

The seed of this story began with the image of a bookshop dappled in light from a stained-glass window. I wanted to try writing a warm and hopeful story—very different from the mode I’ve been writing in for, oh, maybe about a decade! My writing tends towards the dark, the bleak, the brutal—so this story was a pleasing challenge, to figure out how Muna’s situation could be resolved, how two people could come together to be support and community to each other. It was something that ended up feeling like a breath of air I took between writing my other works. In a way, I wanted the story to have a similar vibe to that of a warm fanfic.

I loved the process of building Muna’s world: the social hierarchies and stereotypes that govern the lives of immigrants and othered folk in Barish; the world of writing, publishing, bookselling; the kind of story Muna would be driven to write, what obstacles she might face in pursuing her dreams; and also the intertextual bits i.e., the excerpt from Muna’s work in progress, and the references to the Halfborn series and the latest bestseller. The intertextuality particularly felt like I was creating worlds within worlds—and this is something I really enjoy encountering or experimenting with in my own work, writing stories within stories—hopefully it works to provide a glimpse of the complexity and richness of the people and the literatures of Muna’s world.

It’s not a stretch to imagine that the inspiration I drew for Barish and its publishing world is very much inspired by our own, how it’s intertwined with structures of class, race, privilege. I tried to explore some of these dynamics in the story e.g., how the cost of joining the Writers Guild is crushingly prohibitive for Muna; how entry into Barish’s publishing world privileges the resourced upper classes; how mainstream publishing centres whiteness as default; how work by marginalised people is tokenised or deemed unmarketable; and how difficult it is to work and write and dream inside white capitalist structures of publishing.

Where are you in this story?

I worked in publishing for a few years—and of course I’m a writer—so a considerable amount is inspired by what I learned about the business of publishing while on the job, as well as the critical conversations that have been going on in more recent years about much-needed change in the industry.

In London, publishing is one of those passion-based jobs that people dream of getting, so when you’re given entry into its world, you are so grateful for the opportunity. You don’t question how underpaid and overworked you are; you try not to think too much about any feelings of discomfort, alienation, invisibility, or hypervisibility you may experience as a minority. In London, publishing is a space that is still very white and middle class; I think it was only in hindsight that I realised what a strange and disorientating experience that must have been for me.

I wanted to explore some of these nuances, whilst incorporating a larger critique of publishing practices and exploitative labour systems, through the power imbalances between Muna and Arethor, Lenore and Karabel. So we have Lenore Phoenix’s celebrated cultural appropriation and her exploitation of both Karabel as a ghostwriter and Senai identity as a whole; we have the way Arethor feels entitled to Muna’s time and labour and friendship; the exploitative way he uses capitalist speak of “we are family”; his casual acts of racist and sexist microaggressions (though there is nothing really “micro” about them) that are couched in the language of kindness and good intentions; and how difficult Muna finds it to recognise let alone confront these—because to do so would perhaps mean not being able to survive.

On a more positive note, I think the story is also an ode to writing peers who understand and see you, who engage meaningfully with your work and support you to achieve your visions; an ode to writing communities. I’m happy I was able to incorporate that into Muna’s story, to hopefully capture something of the joy and magic of discussing ideas with a peer and of being seen, because in these past few years, finding community has been a singular and meaningful experience for me and the health of my writing!

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

I have a new story, “Sell Your Trauma for Salvation,” in the July issue of Nightmare. It’s a pretty bleak look at capitalism as a cannibalising force. I have the vague thought that one day I’d like to return to Barish, perhaps looking at a different part of this society—maybe when I need a breath of air between my other unrelenting projects!

Otherwise, I am mostly working on my PhD project, a short story collection that considers alternative ways of writing sexual violence and trauma—through the language of folklore and horror, silences and absences—and thinks through the complexities of storytelling and testimonies. I usually post about my publications and writing updates on Twitter: @IshaKarki11.