Anjali Enjeti

How did you become a writer? Twenty-one-and-a-half years ago, I gave birth to my first child. Until then, I’d been an avid reader and practicing attorney. Motherhood unleashed this primal need for me to pen what this experience was like. I began by blogging, and then writing parenting articles.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). If I had to name one book that inspired me to write, it would be Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. It’s such a magical book. When I picked it up, I felt like I was discovering the English language for the first time. I reread it recently – it still packs the same punch.

The late Valerie Boyd was a friend and writing mentor for many years, and she was one of the authors who first got me into book reviewing. Jessica Handler, another Atlanta-area writer, has been so supportive of my writing journey from the beginning. Journalist and author Fariba Nawa is my best friend. She’s based in Istanbul but I talk to her daily over WhatsApp about writing and life. Kavitha Rajagopalan, Madhushree Ghosh, Gayatri Sethi, and several other South Asian women writers guide and inspire me on this journey.

When and where do you write? I write in the sunroom at the back of our house. There are several large windows, so it’s filled with lots of natural light. I’m surrounded by oak, pine, and cryptomeria trees. Families of deer skip through the yard. I can hear birds chirping and woodpeckers pecking. It’s like being outside, but without the pollen and mosquito bites!

What are you working on now? I’m working on another novel. This one takes place in the 1990s in North Georgia, in the very tail end of the Appalachia Mountains. It’s about a mother and daughter who are haunted by an assassination that occurred in the early 1970s in Hyderabad, a city in southern India.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? I’m not sure I’d call what I have writer’s block. I suffer from chronic pain, and it controls a large part of my life. I can’t write on a schedule. I go months without writing. I have to write around my pain in order to write at all.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Years ago, I attended a writing event where author Bernice McFadden was the featured speaker. She said that she doesn’t feel creative every day so she doesn’t write every day. I found this so liberating. After that day, I quit feeling guilty about not writing every day.

What’s your advice to new writers? Don’t judge your talent or skill as a writer based on how often or where you publish. Bylines ultimately don’t determine your worth as a writer.

Anjali Enjeti is an Atlanta-based former attorney, journalist, and organizer. She is the author of Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change, and The Parted Earth. She is the winner of the Georgia Author of the Year for first novel, a gold medal recipient for Best Regional Nonfiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and is a 2023 finalist for the Townsend Prize for fiction. Her other writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing in the MFA programs at Antioch University in Los Angeles and Reinhardt University.