INTERVIEWS

The de Groot Foundation team sat down with 2025 winner, Shastri Akella.

Shastri Akella’s debut novel, The Sea Elephants (Penguin India, Macmillan USA 2023), was named a most anticipated debut by Good Morning America and shortlisted the 2023 Godrej Literature Best First Book (Fiction). His short fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories: 2024 (edited by Lauren Groff) and is a winner of the 2024 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize, the 2023 William Faulkner Prize, and the 2023 BLR Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, among others. His stories are available in Guernica, Fairy Tale Review, Black Warrior Review, The Massachusetts Review, Mint Lounge, Usawa Literary Review, The Masters Review and elsewhere.

The de Groot Foundation team sat down with 2024 winner, Sukie Wilson,

Sukie Wilson is a London-based writer, working around the slowed-time of chronic illness. Their work has been shortlisted for Spread The Word’s Early Career Bursary and the Alpine Fellowship prize. Sukie is a multi-tasker by nature, so they are currently working on both a collection of short stories and their first novel.

We sat down with previous shortlister Pip Finkemeyer to about short fiction, her first novel and what it means to write the sad girl novel (2024).

Pip Finkemeyer’s fiction has been listed for the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, the Richell Prize for Emerging Writers, the Disquiet Literary Prize and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She co-founded the Berlin-based zine Nothing To See Here, and completed a Masters in Publishing and Editing at RMIT.

Stephen and Young got together to discuss their 2022 stories and the writing process, published here on Minor Literature[s].

Stephen Lynch is from Dublin, Ireland. His work has appeared in Winter Papers and Two Thirds North. 

Young Rader lives and writes in Berlin. His work has appeared in the New England Review, Little Star, Passages North, and elsewhere. He was a 2014-2015 Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Isha Karki is a PhD student and a graduate of Clarion West. Isha was a runner-up in our 2021 short fiction prize with her story ‘AN ACCOUNT OF THE [WAR HEROINES] OF THE FIRST INDEPENDENCE WAR [BY AN UNNAMED SOLDIER]’. Her short fiction has also won the Dinesh Allirajah Prize in 2021 and the Galley Beggar Short Story Prize and Mslexia Short Story Competition in 2020. Isha was the judge for the 2021/2022 Galley Begger prize and her most recent story, ‘When We Were Gods’, can be found on LightSpeed Magazine.

We chat to her about her writing, judging literary prizes, and her favourite works from last years Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction!