On Kitaab—an Initiative of Literary Citizen Journalism

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

We are living in the age of digital media, and today when a blog is created every second of the day, I was finding it difficult to be at the cutting-edge of Asian writing in English. While new writers from Asia, some based in the region, and most others making their mark in the Western capitals, were emerging by the handful almost on a weekly basis, a gargantuan amount of literary babble was being generated in the digital world. Add to it the already existing Asian literary heavyweights (or those of the Asian origin), and your literary cauldron is brimming over.

The good thing about this whole new literary chat was that it was supplanting the information that was increasingly shrinking from the pages of the traditional media. Bloggers and web writers discussed writers, new and old, and evaluated their works from individual perspectives, without the fear of a snip-happy politically correct editor sitting on their stories with his editorial scissors.

But all that was being said or being talked about in the new media was not always sensible. Yet there were many debates and discussions that were worth checking out. But then was it possible to keep track of who was saying what about Asian writers and Asian writing—maybe Google could have helped—but again, who had the time to go through hundreds of search results on a daily basis.

Kitaab was born keeping in mind all these considerations. Kitaab which means “book” in Urdu/Hindi (Indian languages) came alive as a space to celebrate and critique Asian writing in English. My idea was to create a link-based information warehouse where the most important stories on Asian writers and writing remained stored. And lovers of Asian writing would have to look no further for the assorted news on their favourite writers. All they had to do was to visit Kitaab and quench their literary thirst.

Apart from news and links to resources, Kitaab also aims to provide a platform to emerging writers from the region to express themselves creatively. In short, Kitaab is the literary equivalent of citizen journalism in other areas.

Kitaab has just completed one year of its existence, and it is already being read in many parts of the world. Though we have started small, our ambitions are big—we want to establish ourselves as a quality resource centre on Asian writing in English. It might take some time but we are determined to reach where we want to see ourselves. And this is only possible when we have the support of our readers and writers. Your feedback, support and contributions are always welcome.

Here are some sample works from Kitaab. Hope you enjoy reading them. And if you do want to share something with us, please write to us at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Best wishes,

Zafar Anjum
Editor
Kitaab

Filed under : EDITORIAL  -

ARCHIVES of June , 2006