Anita Nair is a bestselling and critically acclaimed author of both adult and children’s fiction. In 2012, she wrote her first crime novel featuring Inspector Gowda and the second crime novel featuring the same inspector was published in 2016. The third installation of the Inspector Gowda series will be published soon. She also writes poetry and has published a collection called Malabar Mind. Her books have been translated into over thirty one languages around the world.
In a freewheeling chat with Scroll.in, Anita Nair talked about how her collection of poetry came to be, creating fiction for adults and children, why a transvestite person is at the heart of her crime thriller series, and more. Excerpts from the conversation:
What kind of events are more likely to bring out the poet in you?
I began as a poet. When I started writing, it was with poetry. For the longest time I was a closet writer, a closet poet. Eventually what came out was the prose part of it – somehow writing poetry meant laying bare my vulnerabilities for the whole world to see. It took me a long time to find the resilience to put my poetry out there.
Anything that moves me – very intensely and very violently –…
