<p>35. <strong>Indian &amp; Pakistani authors &amp; poets </strong>talk to co-hosts <strong>Paul Waters</strong> &amp; <strong>Jonathan Kennedy</strong> on the <strong>We&#39;d Like A Word</strong> books &amp; authors podcast at the <strong>Khushwant Singh Literary Festival London 2025 </strong>(which Paul also co-organises). </p><p>We hear from Devike Rege on Indian politics, whether &quot;home is a place where you can be comfortably racist&quot; &amp; her book Quarterlife; from Shueyb Gandapur on his book Coming Back - The Odyssey of a Pakistani Through India, on the unusual challenges of getting his book published in India, and on his Pakistani home Dera Ismail Khan &amp; how Hindus and Sikhs who fled during partition preserve memories of the city in India, &amp; on and the unusual challenges of getting his book published in India; from KSLF organiser Niloufer Bilimoria; from Saba Karim Khan on the Pakistan #itscomplicated essay collection she edited &amp; contributed to, &amp; how to get behind the cliches of potraying Pakistan; from Muhammed Ali Bandial on his contribution to Pakistan #itscomplicated &amp; his complex relationship with his homeland; from Prabhu Guptara of Pippa Rann publishing, Global Resilience publishing &amp; Salt Desert Media; from poet Tanya Rai who is @diversityofme on Instagram; &amp; from poet Devi Chatterjee who has also helped develop the Poetry Archive&#39;s new online collection of south Asian poets reading their own work.</p><p>And we also hear about the recent India-Pakistan conflict and ceasefire, Saraiki language &amp; Pashtun culture, Lahore authors Awais Khan &amp; Faiqa Mansab, Pakistani Olympic gold medallist javelin thrower, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji, the Marati language, poets Sudeep Sen and R Parthasarathy, the Rann of Kutch salt desert &amp; the Great Indian Salt Hedge, Stephen Huyler&#39;s book Transformed by India - A Life, &amp; poets Rabindranath Tagore, Bhanu Kapil &amp; Sampurna Chatterji.</p><p>WHO IS JONATHAN KENNEDY? Jonathan was Director of Arts in India for 5 years for the British Council. He&#39;s been everywhere in India and knows everyone there involved in culture. He was also for 12 years the Executive Director of Tara Arts, looking at the world through a South Asian lens. Jonathan is doing some India &amp; South Asian episodes of We&#39;d Like A Word with us every now &amp; then. </p><p><strong>We&#39;d Like A Word is a podcast &amp; radio show from authors Paul Waters &amp; Stevyn Colgan.</strong> (And sometimes Jonathan Kennedy.) We talk with writers, readers, editors, agents, celebrities, talkers, poets, publishers, booksellers, &amp; audiobook creators about books - fiction &amp; non-fiction. We go out on various radio &amp; podcast platforms. Our website is http://www.wedlikeaword.com for information on Paul, Steve &amp; our guests. We&#39;re on Twitter @wedlikeaword &amp; Facebook @wedlikeaword &amp; our email is [email protected] Yes, we&#39;re embarrassed by the missing apostrophes. We like to hear from you - questions, thoughts, ideas, guest or book suggestions. Perhaps you&#39;d like to come on We&#39;d Like A Word to chat, review or read out passages from books.</p><p>Paul is the author of a new Irish-Indian cosy crime series set in contemporary Delhi. The first in the series is <strong>Murder in Moonlit Square</strong>, which published by No Exit Press / Bedford Square Publishers in October 2025 - but you can pre-order it now. (Ah go on.) It&#39;ll also be published in India in paperback in October 2025 by Penguin India. Paul previously wrote the 1950s Irish border thriller <strong>Blackwatertown</strong>.</p><p>We can also recommend <strong>Cockerings</strong>, the comic classic by Stevyn Colgan, and his hugely popular YouTube channel <strong>@Colganology </strong></p>