Meet Meena Kandasamy: poet, novelist, rebel

The Book Show

Meena Kandasamy is an Indian born poet, novelist, rebel and activist who's been threatened and harassed for her writing. From the Byron Writers Festival she explains why she keeps going despite the threats.

She is also celebrated for her innovative approach to storytelling. Her debut novel The Gypsy Goddess (2015) was about the 1968 massacre of Dalit agricultural workers. Her book When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife is about her own experience of domestic violence. Her latest work is a collection of poetry called Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You.

She told Claire Nichols about the importance of ego as a writer, her family background raised in a house of academics and rebels and the challenge of being an activist.