Samrat Upadhyay is a Nepali-born American author whose works are centered on Nepali society and culture. He is the author of acclaimed books, Arresting God in Kathmandu, The Royal Ghosts, The Guru of Love, Buddha’s Orphans, The City Son, and Mad Country. He has received numerous accolades for his books, including the New York Times Notable Book, San Francisco Chronicle Best Book, 2007 Asian American Literary Award, and Society of Midland Authors Book Award. The Royal Ghosts was also a finalist for the Frank O’Connor Int’l Short Story Award. His new novel, Darkmotherland, is being published by Soho Press in 2024. Currently, Upadhyay is a Distinguished Professor of English and Martha C. Kraft Professor of Humanities at Indiana University.

Upadhyay also sponsors and judges Writing Nepal: A Short Story Contest in partnership with La.Lit magazine. Upadhyay, who is currently in Nepal, is due to announce the winners of this year’s La. Lit short story contest on December 21 at 2 pm in Malpi Institute, Baluwatar. Ken Subedi converses with Upadhyay on his affinity towards books, writing, and teaching.

You have written short stories as well as novels. In your experience, what was more challenging, story-story collection or a novel?

I feel more at home with short stories, but novels present more difficulties, perhaps because I feel that I’m not a natural novelist. Apart from the novel’s larger canvas, which presents its own challenges, the writing process is a bit nerve-wracking. You can write for three years or more (Darkmotherland took me about a decade to write) without fully knowing whether the project is going to be successful. But lately I’m finding that my short stories are getting longer and longer, and often they want to veer off into tangents and discursions, so perhaps I’m growing into a good little apprentice of the mighty novel

How has reading books shaped your personality as an author?

Reading is such an integral part of writing for me that at times it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. I am quite impressionable, so I get easily influenced by what I’m reading at the moment. When I’m reading Cormac McCarthy, for example, I wish I could write into my own fiction the kind of dark and desolate landscape he envisions. Currently I’m reading the Argentinian writer Mariana Enriquez and am totally in love with her menacing and morbid stories of dead babies and demons and the occult. Reading her, I feel like I ought to write at least one horror story before I die. I actually like that I can get so excited by new authors I encounter, and I also am delighted when what I teach makes an impression on my students. Recently, after reading the latest Nobel winner Jon Fosse, I taught a chapter of his superb novel Morning and Evening, and I was pleased that Fosse’s free-flowing style with its eccentric syntax empowered a student to discover, in her own writing, a voice that was uniquely her own.

Do you agree that only a handful of writers from Nepal are able to produce fiction in English? Why is Nepal’s representation in English fiction negligible?

If the recent Writing Nepal contest is an indication, there is a lot of talent in fiction writing in English. In this year’s contest, I was impressed not only by the craft these writers showcased but also the risks they took. So, they might not be publishing, but they are certainly making wonderful creations. And, judging from the crappy books published every year—in America, in India—publication isn’t necessarily the only sign of the health of literature. But yes, we do need more good fiction to be published in Nepal. Radha: Wrath of the Maeju by Rishi Amatya, is a good example of quality fiction rooted in our culture that’s been published with an amazing editorial care by Safu.

Can you tell us more about your life as a creative writing professor?

I teach primarily fiction writing at Indiana University, in a department with a national reputation. Our competitive MFA program attracts students from all over the world, so I work with writers with amazing talent. Most of the time I am teaching graduate and undergraduate fiction workshops, and I find my teaching life very rewarding. Not only do I love teaching but I’m teaching the stuff I love. Sometimes I feel like I have the best job in the world. I have the opportunity to shape future writers, keep my own creative faculties sharp, and also learn a lot in the process. My students inspire me with their talents and their insights.

So, does this mean that creative writing can be taught?

I think people need to think of the teaching of writing as the teaching of, say, music, or tennis. Even if people have natural talent, that talent needs to be developed and nurtured. A good coach or a mentor, or even an intelligent peer, can provide guidance and inspiration that can lead to breakthroughs.

Do you suffer from writer’s block? If so, what do you do to overcome it?

I wouldn’t be a writer if I didn’t suffer from writer’s block. I’ve also discovered over the years that thinking of it as a “block” is counter-productive. A ‘block’ also implies a ‘flow,’ which is then supposed to be the ideal state of writing. But perhaps we should stop thinking of it as such a strict binary. When there’s a block, our brain might be trying to find ways to move to a higher level of creativity. Similarly, it’s quite possible that a good flow doesn’t necessarily lead to good writing. So, when faced with a block, I allow myself the freedom to explore. I do a lot of free writing, granting myself liberty to create work that might be useless or crappy. Often, in this exploration, I discover an opening that then leads to breakthroughs. A disciplined writing practice can also help. When you force yourself to write daily, blocks and flows recede to the background.  A writer’s block can be also cured by doing something physical–play a sport, go swimming or running etc. Sometimes watching a smart movie can trigger creativity in interesting ways.

It’s been more than two decades since you published your first book, Arresting God in Kathmandu. You’ve written three story collections and three novels. In what ways have you grown as a writer? Any advice to writers who are at the beginning of the process?

When I was first starting out, I used to think that all I had to do was write my first book and everything would be hunky-dory after that. I thought that a first book would mean that I had “arrived,” and I would no longer have to struggle with writing. How wrong I was! Each book has presented a different challenge, and each book has been more difficult to write than the previous one. My forthcoming novel, Darkmotherland, was the most challenging of them all. It’s a book of experiment and absurdity and dark humor, and it’s unlike anything I’ve written before. So I’ve grown in the sense that I’ve become more experimental, and I want to take even greater risks in my writing. I’m writing more than ever before–I have several books in various stages of completion, including a book about a talking dog.

My advice: there are no short-cuts in this business. Writing is hard, and it’ll get harder as you become better. You have to stick with it, you have to be disciplined. Don’t look for easy success. Don’t follow literary trends. Allow your writing to come from the depth of your being. Read voraciously, including books from far-flung places that might be very different from where you live. Make reading and writing such a part of your daily life that they become as natural as breathing.