Looking for a Spark
HIP catches up with a woman on a literary mission
Hastings and St Leonards has an exceptional wealth of creative individuals. One such ‘creative’ is London-born Aruna Vasudevan, a multi-talented, charismatic writer and editor but, importantly, one committed to helping local writers find their voice.
She has created a writers’ forum, entitled ‘Wordsmith,’ that facilitates events held in safe, secure and interesting venues where aspiring writers can meet with other literary creatives. As Aruna observes sharply, “too much of creative interaction is still via platforms like Zoom – Wordsmith is about face-to-face interaction; a chance for anyone, experienced or not, to come along and talk, write or simply be.”
THE LURE OF THE SEA
A former commissioning editor and publisher, Aruna now works for herself under the aegis of The Literary Shed, the company that she set up after experiencing double bereavement, divorce and what she describes as a necessary “self-imposed exile from words.” After that, she reassessed her life and decided to move to the sea. “As a city kid, reading authors like du Maurier, Rhys and Christie, I fantasised about writing in Cornwall – in a cottage with an ocean view.” But reality intervened, “I had to go to work in London.” But now Aruna has moved to St Leonards and, as she says, “I look out of my windows directly onto an endless sea and sky, a living postcard.”
For Aruna, Wordsmith is about celebrating everything she loves, about finding the joy of words and voice, no matter what your age, sexuality, gender or ethnicity might be. She feels that it is important to resist being “put into boxes” or being seen just as someone who “fits an acronym”.
KINDNESS AND COLLABORATION
Wordsmith is not a business; Aruna is self-funded. Most events are free, but some, by necessity, involve a small fee. “Local businesses and creative places have been enormously generous; from Charlie Crabbe at the Hastings Bookshop – who offers our members a discount on his books – to Stephanie at Graze – who bothered to reply to my email while she was on holiday, when I was seeking a venue for our Writers Café. Steph actually agreed to open an hour early to help out. Leslie Barker at the Hastings Arts Forum at Marine Court offered gallery space for our open-ended ‘Words without Borders’ – one of the evening events – without hesitation.” As Aruna adds, “This is a fantastic and supportive community, with so many willing to go the extra mile, and so much of life is about collaboration and support.”
The next meet-up of the Writers Café will be at Graze on 8 December, between 11am and 12. “It’s just a chance to draw breath and interact with other people who under normal circumstances one might not normally meet. To have a chat and a decent cuppa, watch, listen and learn.”
There’s also a monthly book club that focuses on what Aruna calls “old familiars” – books that “bring me solace when I need it most”. Some deal with still very contemporary issues, such as Jean Rhys’ The Wide Sargasso Sea, a book that deals intriguingly with racism and colonialism and long established tropes of apparently comforting escapism. Aruna feels sure that “most of the books in question can be found in good indie bookshops, charity shops, second-hand bookshops and, of course, the library; accessibility is important to me.”
HELPING FLEDGLING WRITERS
Next year Wordsmith plans to create a Breakfast Club, a morning event where people can chat about all things from their current writing to film narratives and even commercial issues about the publishing industry itself. Aruna’s great strength as a mentor is that she has more than twenty years of experience in UK and US publishing, working for companies as diverse as Hodder, Headline, Piatkus, Sceptre and Orion. She has the kind of insider knowledge that is so important to fledgling writers. As she stated, we are “just looking for a spark”.
As Aruna accepts, many writers find themselves in “very solitary” work, often with unrealistic expectations of what might happen after they put the final full stop on their manuscript. She wants to give incipient writers not just literary advice but some vital understanding about the industry itself. As she says, “small insights can make all the difference.”
COMING HOME TO WORDS
She also says that in helping other people she has rekindled her own love of words. It is evidently a love that is very catholic in its tastes. You can tell that she is a great communicator because our conversations meandered in all directions. We had not expected, for example, to find out that she is a great fan of Alfred Hitchcock films and a particular devotee of his filmic rendition of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. She says of film, “It is how I came to words. I grew up in a very noisy household, the youngest of five opinionated children – the music and film we listened to informed my world. My mother was a huge Hitchcock fan.” What becomes evident as we talk is that she is happy to switch her attention across all sorts of genres.
There can be no doubt that a great deal of the emotional impulse that drives Aruna stems from her family life. As she says, “Wordsmith is about love.” It is in a curious way motivated by the need to give back some respect to her mother and brother, both of whom loved words and both of whom have now passed away. Her brother died before he could finish his novel, “He was an influential health economist, a very talented writer who put off concentrating on his novel until he retired.” But he passed away before he could bring his work to fruition. It is clearly an emotional and painful memory, but it has also, in some sense, inspired her. “If I can help one person get their dream, it will be worth it. You have to try, don’t you?”
What struck us most is that Aruna is keen to take all of her experience, painful and positive, and find a way to make it meaningful. She is, above all, determined to “pay forward” the many kindnesses she has received.
For further on Wordsmith or The Literary Shed, please contact [email protected]
While most Wordsmith events are free, the paid ones support at least one place for a member from the refugee community and/or a survivor of sexual violence. If you’re interested, please email Aruna with a sentence or so about why you write and a short paragraph about who you are. All information will be treated as private and confidential.
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