Mimi Mondal, “How do we rewrite”

The Department of Global Studies is pleased to co-sponsor Mimi Mondal’s visit as a part of Dalit History Month at UWM, organized by COLORLIT.

Mimi Mondal, “How do we rewrite: Speculative Fiction, Queer Stories and a Dalit-Immigrant Consciousness”

Do you sometimes revisit things you have written many years ago? A great story, but one that is disconnected from your present reality? One that was written before your present conscious identity was formed, one that was before you made major geographical moves? What do you do to such a story? Do you attempt to hide it from the face of this earth or do you rewrite it? In this talk, Mimi will be talking about the process of rewriting and the way changing identities makes one view their writing differently. Mimi will reflect on how the rewriting processes especially work within a Dalit consciousness and the way marginalized identity is folded into speculative fiction writing. Mimi’s talk would also speak to her experience as an immigrant writer in New York, and how their view of their stories changes through their immigration process.

In this talk, Mimi will delve into Bengali language culture and history, and how she incorporates them into her speculative fiction writing.

Biography of Mimi Mondal:

Mimi Mondal (she/they) is a writer and editor of the fictitious. Her fiction has been nominated twice for the Nebula Award: in 2020 with her novelette His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light, and in 2022 for ancient-Bengal-inspired setting titled Shankhabhumi and the adventure “In the Mists of Manivarsha” in the Dungeons & Dragons anthology Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. In 2018 she received nominations for the Hugo, British Fantasy and Ditmar Awards, and was awarded the Locus Award for Non-fiction for co-editing the anthology Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler with Alexandra Pierce.  Among Mimi’s current creative projects is a longer series of D&D-compatible characters and locations inspired by Bengal and elsewhere in South Asia, which she publishes monthly on her Patreon.

Mimi was the recipient of the A.C. Bose Grant for South Asian Speculative Fiction in 2022; the Immigrant Artist Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2017; the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship for the Clarion West Writing Workshop in 2015; a Commonwealth Shared Scholarship at University of Stirling in 2013; and the Poetry with Prakriti Prize in 2010.

Dalit History Month events at UWM have been organized by COLORLIT and co-sponsored by COLORLIT would like to thank t Sociocultural Programming; the Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center grant; English; Global Studies; Women’s and Gender Studies; the Center for 21st Century Studies; the LGBTQ+ Resource Center; and the Bay Foundation in connection with the Mitzvah Fund.