One thing I will never do is miss an opportunity to talk about writing and stories with my dear friend Rukman Ragas. They’ve been on Bookish Brews before highlighting South Asian Authors In Science Fiction & Fantasy: 8 New Book Releases and their brilliance always astounds me. When I put out a call to my brilliant mutuals to do interviews with me, I immediately knew this one would exceed my expectations. Rukman and I connect on our mutual desire to break down the hierarchies that we place on literature, brick by brick, and I’m so honored to be doing it alongside them, and alongside so many others. Please enjoy this interview, I hope you learn as much as I did.
Interview with Rukman Ragas
Amanda: Welcome back to Bookish Brews! I’m so excited to talk to you about cultural hegemony and writing outside of the west. But first, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little about your writing?
Rukman Ragas: Hi, I’m Rukman Ragas and I’m a Tamil writer from Sri Lanka. I write speculative and literary fiction about everything really but I mostly like looking at identity, diaspora and immigration, storytelling, and queerness from a postcolonial lens. My fiction has been published in khoreo, Tasavvur and The Baltimore Review among other places. I’m represented by Keir Alekseii at Azantian Literary Agency and very excited about returning to Bookish Brews.
Amanda: Since we’re talking about writing outside of the west, I think a great place to start is that you recently signed with your agent! Congratulations! How was the querying and signing process for you?
Rukman: Thank you! It still feels very surreal. First, I want to preface by saying I’m an outlier. I just got very, very lucky. That said, while I didn’t query for long, I prepared for a while, expecting to spend a decade in the trenches, so that might have helped.
The signing week was very stressful but when I got on call with my offering agent, it was an easy choice because I loved her passion and strategy. Keir is also a queer POC from the Global South and they got my struggles in a way I didn’t expect anyone in publishing to. I truly think ours is a perfect partnership.
Amanda: And how do you feel your querying journey differs from your peers, especially ones who are in the west?
Rukman: It’s mostly access, I would say. The actual access to agents themselves is so much better now that querying is online but access to knowledge is still very limited. So even finding out about agents is a privilege. The second one is molding oneself to the Western gaze. So often, I had to condense myself into the identity of Asian even though it’s so nebulous that it basically holds no meaning to me. But when I scoured MSWLs and client lists, I had to look out for Asian fantasy. I also had to consider that most people in publishing don’t want stories set outside the West or if it is set outside the West, they want it from a perspective they could identify with, so they could relate. That’s one of the main reasons I chose to write a second world fantasy because I knew trying to write a diaspora Tamil story set in Sri Lanka was only going to lead to heartbreak.
Also, dealing with the racism and microaggressions inbuilt into this industry hasn’t been easy. One question I keep getting asked is why I am not publishing in Sri Lanka. I’m going to try and answer for a lot of authors from my side of the world. A lot of us come from countries with a very stripped down local publishing scene and this means there is no other way to publish except traditional publication with the Big 5 in the West. Self publishing is prohibitively expensive to do from here, most presses here either deal entirely in native languages or don’t have the distribution. If you have multiple marginalizations like I do, then your options are even more limited.
Amanda: What are the tips you would give to someone who is querying, especially if they are from the Global South?
I try to avoid giving advice because of how volatile querying is and my unique circumstances. But it would be amiss if I didn’t pass on things that have served me well, especially as a writer from the Global South. So here are two tips:
- First is to vet agencies well when you query. Check for agent sales and mentorship but also contract management, agency sales and subrights management. Whisper networks are good but if they are not accessible, I recommend checking Absolute Write forum, r/PubTips and your peers in the community. You also don’t want to be an agent’s token diverse person (those experiences never end well), so check their client lists as much as you check their MSWL list.
- Second, use social media to your advantage. Not just for pitching (which I recommend learning to do) but also for community, vetting and gaining knowledge. I know Twitter has not been great for a while now but without it, I don’t think I would know anything about publishing. Following folks like Tess Sharpe, Bethany Baptiste, the Print Run Podcast and The Publishing Rodeo Podcast, who freely shared publishing knowledge was very useful in learning about the industry.
I don’t think I will ever say more than this about my querying journey (because it really was not that big of a journey) but I want to stress again that so much of the process is luck. If you’ve been querying and done all the usual recommended stuff, you are probably doing everything right. There’s no secret sauce to it and I’m rooting for you!
Amanda: You’ve also found some recent successes with short story acceptances to literary magazines. How do you feel your experience differs from someone writing in the west?
Rukman: This is a topic I’m more familiar with and while I’m still leery of giving absolute advice, I can talk about short story submissions in more depth because I’ve been doing it for close to two years now, even though I only published my first story this year. Submissions are brutal. Acceptances are rare for everyone.
So, I think the way my experience differs from someone based in the Global North is in cultural currency and actual currency and yes, this plays a lot into the submission process.
Amanda: You mention a discrepancy in cultural currency. Can you expand on what you mean by that?
Rukman: A lot of the folks based in the West have shared media tastes; most have grown up with star wars and lord of the rings, they learn the same myths at school, their internet meme culture is shared etc. But I didn’t grow up with any of this (i still haven’t watched LoTR), so my stories are not callbacks to recognisable touchstones.
I’m also constantly explaining things that are perfectly normal to me because they are going to be new to the American reader. There is also the assumption that because I’m an ESL writer, my language is “bad”, writing in dialect is bad etc. Otherwise, there are weird double standards; there are places that have published very political stories about American issues when relevant but refuse to publish anything political about our countries because we are considered too esoteric.
The next is how we get paid. So, as you can imagine, a lot of us don’t have access to paypal or venmo and in my case, not even Amazon, so getting paid for writing is an actual pain. Quite a few places straight up refuse to pay writers in anything except a particular transfer service and in case someone accommodates us, we have to bear the international transfer costs.
Amanda: Can you share with our readers any specific tips for writers submitting to short fiction markets?
Rukman:
- Don’t self-reject. They’ll do it for you. If you are worried about your English because it’s your second or third language, remember that “native” speakers will make as many mistakes as you do. Your only task is to deliver a good story in the best condition you can get it to. If the magazine is splitting hairs over commas and typos, then they are probably not the type of people you want to work with.
- Use Submission Grinder and ChillSubs to search for markets to submit to. Keep an eye out on social media. It’s a good idea to read the magazines because you technically want to be published in places you like to read but don’t worry too much if you can’t keep up with everyone.
- Always keep writing the next thing. The only tried and tested way to get published in short fiction is to constantly send out work and this means you have to constantly produce work.
- If PayPal doesn’t work for you, there are a few alternatives. I use Wise for direct transfers. Western Union also works in Sri Lanka. If the amount is small enough, you can ask for an Amazon gift card.
- Build a good community around you. Swap critiques (key word being swap).
- Learn to differentiate between genre conventions. In SFFH, it’s common courtesy for magazines to pay their authors, thus the existence of pro, semi pro and token markets based on how much they pay. Literary markets are much less likely to pay but that doesn’t mean they are bad markets. As a rule of thumb, submit to places that publish things that you like to read.
Amanda: Let’s talk about community. Many authors that visit us here talk about how critical it is to have a community of writer friends. How have you found your own writing community? How has having a writing community impacted your writing life?
Rukman: Community has been incredibly important to me and I don’t think I could have done any of this without all the wonderful writers who lifted me up when I needed it. And yes, I’m also here to stress about the importance of finding “your people”, the ride or dies. I think I’ve found mine and having a group of friends who write consistently all over the world has been life changing. There is stuff that you can only talk to writer friends, advice that has saved my life, and friendships formed that feel like they’ll last a lifetime.
But I also want to talk about the broader writing community in general. I think, overall, my experience has been positive, but for writers from Global South, entering can feel a little difficult because of all the barriers to entry. To find your people, I recommend participating in community focused events like pitlight and questpit, entering mentorships, and generally being nice and kind.
We don’t have the passport or currency power to fly to different conventions to find community physically and as much as I would like to say otherwise, it can be quite limiting, especially in the indie and short fiction scene where everyone knows everyone. But the power of the internet is strong and you can find lifelong writing friends–ask me how I know.
Amanda: I’m so happy to see all the community support in your life, it’s genuinely so important! Looking toward the future, what are some things you’d like to see change in the industry and/or community to make the world of publishing more accessible to people outside of the Imperial Core? Feel free to be selfish here!
Rukman: I would love to see short fiction markets commit to Global South authors. This means seeking us out for editorial positions (there are some incredible editors from the Global South working in shortfic, Gautam Bhatia and Shingai Njeri Kagunda, to name two but would love to see more in mentored first reader positions, assistant and associate editor positions.) It also means training first readers and editors to be more open to what a story can be; it doesn’t always need to follow the western structures.
In the broader publishing landscape, I really hope that people realize that relatability shouldn’t be the metric when venturing into a story. There is great magic we can weave if you meet us halfway and if you really want diverse stories, then making that effort is crucial.
Amanda: You’ve already mentioned a handful of friends and other writers, so I’d love to give you more space for that and to give them more space in the narrative. Can you tell us about some incredible writers that you know of writing from the Global South?
Rukman: I’d love to shout out some of my favorite writers from the Global South who have inspired me.
First, as always, it’s Vajra Chandrasekhara. His incredible novel, The Saint of Bright Doors, is one that requires the reader to let go of their preconceived notions, meet it halfway and the rewarding story is incredible.
I adore Indra Das (The Last Dragoners of Bowbazaar), Prashanth Srivatsa (The Spice Gate), Amal Singh (The Garden of Delights) and Samit Basu (The Jinnbot of Shantiport). Archita Mitta, Gabrielle Emem Harry, Maria Hossain, Kristine Ong Muslim and so many others are doing such exciting work in short fiction and translation. I’m very excited to see how the publishing landscape looks in a few years from now with their growing contributions.
Amanda: Thank you so much for joining us again, we’re always happy to have you here! Is there anything else you’d like to share before heading out?
Rukman: In the words of Rasha Abdulhadi, I’m calling upon you, dear reader, to join me in refusing the genocide of the Palestinian, Congolese, Sudanese people and all oppressed people around the world. Wherever you are, whatever sand you can throw on the wheels of genocide, do it now. In every breath, in every word, resist the empire.
Editors Note
Now and forever, we add our voices to the call to end the multiple genocides happening around the globe. Free Palestine, free Sudan, free the DRC. And as Bookish Brews runs and operates on unceded Gabrielino-Tongva land, we call for an end to US imperialism worldwide. Please find some resources below to learn and donate:
