Souvankham Thammavongsa in conversation with Sharmilla Ganesan

Literature tends to view the experience of refugees and migrants through the lens of terrible tragedy or extraordinary achievement, with characters portrayed as victims or heroes. In her debut short story collection, ‘How to Pronounce Knife’, Souvankham Thammavongsa subverts these literary tropes and reveals refugees and migrants as ordinary people. In this conversation, the 2020 Giller Prize winner speaks to Sharmilla Ganesan about the role of laughter in her fiction, her reorientation of ‘centre’ and ‘margins’, moving between poetry and prose, and how her writing is an invigorating refusal of pity.

This conversation is supported by the High Commission of Canada in Malaysia.