Who am I?
Photograph by Steve Creffield
May name is Umi Sinha and I was born in India and grew up on a remote naval engineering base in the Western Ghats with no television and not much to do, so I spent my childhood and teenage years working my way through my mother’s eclectic library of classics from around the world.
My mother was a writer and an artist. My parents had met during the war when my father came to Britain to serve in the Royal Indian Navy and my mother was working as a secretary at Chatham Dockyard.
As a result of my mixed heritage, I feel I have an outside perspective into both cultures, an ability to see things that many people take for granted from different points of view. Being an outsider is a useful gift for a writer, and for many different reasons most writers do feel like outsiders. Writing is really about ways of seeing, and every writer needs to find their own angle and their own identity.
The search for belonging has motivated much of my own writing. In 2012, I was commissioned to write a memoir piece called "Home" on this topic for the Writing Our Legacy Project.
I am also a professional storyteller. Storytelling is probably in the running for the oldest profession, and one of the things about telling (rather than reading) a story is that you have to be able to reduce it to its basic structural components and then improvise around it to suit your time slot and your audience. It's a fantastic training in focusing on structure and theme, on the use of metaphor and sensory detail, and of course on bringing your characters alive - all essential components of good writing.
My mother was a writer and an artist. My parents had met during the war when my father came to Britain to serve in the Royal Indian Navy and my mother was working as a secretary at Chatham Dockyard.
As a result of my mixed heritage, I feel I have an outside perspective into both cultures, an ability to see things that many people take for granted from different points of view. Being an outsider is a useful gift for a writer, and for many different reasons most writers do feel like outsiders. Writing is really about ways of seeing, and every writer needs to find their own angle and their own identity.
The search for belonging has motivated much of my own writing. In 2012, I was commissioned to write a memoir piece called "Home" on this topic for the Writing Our Legacy Project.
I am also a professional storyteller. Storytelling is probably in the running for the oldest profession, and one of the things about telling (rather than reading) a story is that you have to be able to reduce it to its basic structural components and then improvise around it to suit your time slot and your audience. It's a fantastic training in focusing on structure and theme, on the use of metaphor and sensory detail, and of course on bringing your characters alive - all essential components of good writing.
Writing |
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My first published short story was in Cosmopolitan Magazine and since then I've had stories published in other magazines and online.
"Belonging" , my first novel, was published by Myriad Editions on 17th September 2015. It was shortlisted for The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2016 and the Waverton Good Read Award 2017 and longlisted for the HWA (Historical Writers' Association) Goldsboro Debut Crown Award and the Tata Livelit! Best Book Award 2016. You can find more information about the book, its historical background, and reviews on my website www.umisinha.com. "Parvati", a satirical tale based on the Kama Sutra, was first published in a Serpent Tails's anthology, "Getting Even: Revenge Stories", edited by Mitzi Szereto. It is now available online in the "Needlewriters Anthology", produced by a writers' co-operative in Lewes. You can read it HERE. My short story "India Syndrome" was short-listed for the WriteIdea Prize in 2014 and can be read HERE. |
Qualifications & Experience
MA in Creative Writing with distinction from the University of Sussex.
Associate Tutor on the two year Certificate in Creative Writing course at Sussex University from 1999-2009.
Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Brighton, 2015-2016.
Tutor on the Creative Writing Programme at New Writing South in Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings from 2017.
I teach my own weekly class at the Hillcrest Centre in Newhaven, and run workshops for the Writing Our Legacy Project.
I have also run taught life writing and and reminiscence courses for older people and was involved with collecting stories for the WRVS Heritage Plus Project in 2009-10.
See the Testimonials page for feedback from some of my clients and writing students.
I first trained as a freelance editor for Orient Longman in India, wrote and language-edited titles in the 'Amar Chitra Katha' series, which retells myths, legends and historical events in comic book form for children, and have run writing workshops for the British Council in Mumbai.
In 2014 I was part of a delegation of writers, poets and storytellers who visited St Lucia in the Caribbean to run workshops as part of the Fringe St Lucia Festival, now twinned with the Brighton Fringe Festival.
In 2017/18 I was lucky to be given two grants - one from the Society of Authors and the other from Arts Council England to do two research trips to Italy and another to India to research the novel that I'm currently working on.
Storytelling
I am founder member of The GuestHouse Storytellers club, based in Newhaven since 2006. Here's what storyteller Michael O'Leary said about us in his book "Sussex Folk Tales":
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