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FGLF 2016 Author Interviews : Minoli Salgado
Minoli Salgado is a writer and academic of Sri Lankan descent who was born in Kuala Lumpur. She is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Sussex and the author of the influential study, Writing Sri Lanka: Literature, Resistance and the Politics of Place. In 2012, she was selected as the Olympic poet for Sri Lanka in London's Poetry Parnassus and won the inaugural SI Leeds Literary Prize for her debut novel, A Little Dust on the Eyes (Peepal Tree Press, 2014), which is a haunting evocation of intersecting lives and parallel times that draws upon real historical events. In this richly textured book, myth and magic merge, as the bustle of a seaside city in England gives way to the unreal calm of coastal communities in southern Sri Lanka where thousands disappeared without a trace.
We caught up with her for a chat.
What 3 words would you use to describe yourself?
Not Very Big.
Fondest childhood memory?
My mother’s touch.
Fondest memory of Sri Lanka?
Pony rides, flying kites and eating choc ices at Galle Face. Not all at the same time.
3 things no one knows about you?
I used to love Bond films.
I once flooded a house (sorry, Mr. Emadi).
I built a nursery school post-tsunami.
Tell me about ‘A Little Dust on the Eyes’. How did it come about?
The novel is set in the south coast of Sri Lanka and is about love, loss and silence. I decided to write the book when visiting ancestral homes in the Fort, Matara, in the late Eighties and Nineties.
What do you love most about what you do?
Creating new fictional worlds and sharing them with others.
What do you find most challenging about what you do?
Finding the right words at 3 am. Still trying to find the right words at 10 am.
Expectations for GLF 2016?
A homecoming of the literary kind.
An author you admire and why?
Salman Rushdie, for opening the door.
If you could go back in time and give your 5 year old self some advice, what would it be and why?
Speak up! Because you must.
Minoli Salgado is one of the many writers who’ll be attending the Fairway Galle Literary Festival 2016 starting today!
Interviewed by Jennifer Rodrigo
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