Anis Shivani is a fiction writer, poet, and critic, based in Houston, Texas.
He is the author of the short story collection, Anatolia and Other Stories, published by Black Lawrence Press. Booklist describes the collection as “extraordinary” and “caustically funny.” The collection was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award and one of the stories–”Dubai”–was awarded Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize.
A second short story collection, The Fifth Lash, will be published by C&R Press in early 2012.
His debut poetry book, My Tranquil War and Other Poems, is forthcoming (New York Quarterly Books, May 2012).
Anis is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, and often reviews fiction, poetry, and nonfiction for newspapers and magazines. A collection of his reviews and essays over the last decade, Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies, was published in November 2011 by Texas Review Press/Texas A&M Press Consortium. The book includes a 2012 Pushcart Prize-winning essay on creative writing programs.
His work appears in Southwest Review, Boston Review, Georgia Review, Threepenny Review, Iowa Review, Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Agni, Colorado Review, Boulevard, Pleiades, Harvard Review, North American Review, TLS, Stand, London Magazine, Antigonish Review, Meanjin, and other journals.
He has just finished a novel called Karachi Raj about an American anthropologist conducting fieldwork in South Asia. Next up is a novel set in Mussolini’s Italy.
Anis has an A.B. in economics from Harvard College (1992).
Really looking forward to reading Slums. Question however; did you spend time in Karachi in preparation for writing this book?
I’ve read Shivani’s evaluation of the MFA academic programs, which in my opinion are long overdue for thoughtful criticism. A couple of points: first, you don’t have to be a right-wing ideologue to think that the stylistic dicta of these programs is constricting. “Write what you know?” John Milton would have been told to forget Paradise Lost because he hadn’t been to hell. And Mr Shakespeare? We think you had better stop trying to write about places like Denmark and Rome, which you’ve never visited and don’t understand. Second, the comparison of American MFA programs to the medieval guilds is very helpful. But does the slow death of medieval crafts foretell the death agonies of the novel? What of the long fiction’s possible rebirth in electronic form? Third, integrating creative imagination into an establishment institution (the university), must naturally inhibit originality–ie, diminish the very creativity it seeks to foster. These communities of writers want to preserve themselves and are therefore conservative in their own way. It’s great for writers to have a secure home; it may not always be great for writing to be institutionalized.
Anis,
I am writing in response to your piece on The Huffington Post. I like it. I am a philosopher and writer of political and social commentary with a global audience. I haven’t taken the next step and written a book. I am unsure of when I will. See my bio link below.
Ted
Daphne, AL
my biography: http://www.tedburnettresume.blogspot.com