Aananth Daksnamurthy on his Journey into Publishing

Today’s guest is Aananth Daksnamurthy. He is speaking about his passion for reading and publishing and his upcoming trip to India and Srilaka to look for literature for publication as a part of the SALT initiative.  Aananth Daksnamurthy is a Fulbright scholar graduating with a master's in publishing from New York University. His first book, Acquisition, a Swedish novel titled The Details, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024. Ananth is also part of the SALT contingent, visiting India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh this year and scouting literature for publication in the USA and UK.

SALT—‘South Asian Languages in Translation’ is an initiative by the University of Chicago to bring South Asian literature in English Translation to the Anglophone world. Translators Daniel Hahn, Jason Grunebaum, Arunava Sinha, Daisy Rockwell, and Author VV Ganeshanandan are part of the team leading SALT.

SALT Travel Grant

About the SALT Project

Harshaneeyam: Welcome to Harshaneeyam Aananth.

Aananth Daksnamurthy: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. 

H: How did you develop an interest in literature? 

A: I was born and raised in a small town, Trichy, in Tamil Nadu. From childhood, I started reading pretty early. With all the supplements, usually, the newspaper supplements that come, these are Siruvar Malar, Siruvar Mani, the kid supplementary books I started reading, and mostly newspapers. That's how my literary journey started. I was not a very avid reader initially. I only engaged with news and media in general, but I followed the traditional route of higher education and went on to do engineering. I'm a mechanical engineer with a bachelor's degree and went on to do a postgrad diploma in liberal arts at Ashoka University as a young India fellow. This was partly due to some elective courses I took during my final semester, and I needed to explore more humanities. It gave me a lot of exposure, and two courses stood out.

I took one critical writing course, and I began to write. I became a very effective communicator both in writing and in oral communication. Then, I took another course, Culture and Communication, which was a sociology course. This course gave me a lens on caste, religion, sexuality, and gender. These two courses moulded me into a very different person from who I was initially. Then, I went on to work with ‘The Print’. YIF also gave me a thirst for reading, and I've just started reading a lot of nonfiction. That was a phase when I was reading a lot of nonfiction coming out of Ashoka, more public policy, economics, or history-related nonfiction. I used to go to Delhi Tamil Sangam's library and pick some of these Tamil books there. I initially started with Prabhanjan's short stories, a collection of short stories by the Tamil writer Prabhanjan. I've explored many authors, many genres within Tamil, and contemporary Tamil writing.

And yeah, I've read Jeyamohan. He's a great writer. I love his work. Nooru Naarkaaligal is one of my favourite works from Aram. I've heard so much of S Ra. S Ramakrishnan is another Tamil writer and Sahitya Akademi Award winner. In those days, his videos were podcasts. So, the YouTube videos were an hour or two long. He introduced, at least to this generation, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pushkin. So, a huge introduction to Russian literature came through S. Ramakrishnan. And that's when I remember I started reading much more fiction. Again, short stories were my favourite format. It's also easy to finish short stories and move on to another story, But translated fiction was very recent. I've started reading much more translated literature in the last two or three years. So, I started with some literature from neighbouring states, especially Kerala. I read some of the Malayalam works in Tamil first, and then I started reading in English. I started reading Mukundan's, N S Madhavan's, and M T. Vasudevan Nair's works. I started reading a lot of Korean literature in translation. I've read most of Anton Hur's work. I started with Love in the Big City, Sang Yang Park's Love in the Big City, and Bora Chung's Cursed Bunny. Then there is this beautiful chapbook series called Iyagi from Stranger Press, where they published eight Korean authors from eight Korean translators.

And one of my favourite formats is chapbooks and Korean short stories. Then I've been reading some East Asian literature, Yu Miri's Tokyo Ueno Station. I'm reading Confession, Martin Cohen's Confession, Danny, and Daniel Hans. So yeah, this has been my reading journey so far. I'm trying to be as wide as possible. I don't; I've not narrowed my reading down to a particular genre. I've also read part of my current program. I've read children's, young adult, middle-grade, romance, and thrillers. As a publisher or aspiring publisher, I want to experience all kinds of formats and genres.

So that's where I'm at in terms of reading. 

H: Your father is a very reputed translator of English and Tamil. Congratulations. Last week, he won the Kendra Sahitya Academy Award for Translation. 

A: Yeah. Thank you. 

H: Please convey my best wishes to him. 

A: Of course. 

H: As a mechanical engineer, I am jumping to liberal arts. It's a big leap. Your father is a literary person and a translator. Has it helped you since switching from engineering to Liberal Arts? Did he approve it? 

A: So, the early influence came from him. We used to go to literary events and local literary events together, even when I was a child. I've also seen him writing and translating, but I was always intrigued by translation or literature. I was in my world doing things as a kid, but I started reading trying to figure out what's happening in the publishing house, how a book is published, and what goes around in getting a book to the market.

Then, there were some gaps in the industry. So, it still needs to be more organised regarding the local Tamil publishing industry; Tamil has no full-time writers. I was wondering why. That was my first question: Why are no full-time writers in Tamil? When there are so many full-time writers in the West, or the English language, especially, it's financially not viable here because the authors here don't get and are not financially remunerated properly with advances and royalties.

In most cases, the current young generation of authors have a day job as an IT engineer or medical professional. That struck me quite a bit. So, I wanted to change and bring some intervention into the local industry. That is one, but even contemporary works from other languages reached Tamil very quickly, but it only happened the other way around. No Tamil works went to other languages, as much as there were inward translations. European and Latin American works frequently come into Tamil, and Russian literature has always been there. But Tamil only went to some of these places. Tamil literature never went outside. 

Tamil, even within India, never went to, let's say, East India or Northeast. That's where I figured, okay, as a publisher, only I can make such an intervention, and that's how I took this leap into the publishing industry. So, to answer your question, yes. Initially, my father. He Disapproved of it when I shifted to liberal arts. As a usual Indian parent, they said, you studied engineering. You had to become an engineer. I applied to all these fellowships, such as Teach for India and India Fellowship. That's how the journey started. 

I think confidence came in. I think after or during my YIF journey, they got to know, okay, he'll figure it out. He's probably taking another route, but I think he's proud of me now. Now that I'm here, I got this Fulbright and moved here for grad school at NYU. I am now pursuing this full-time job as a publisher. So I think he's proud. 

H: I believe you were writing too when you were at print. 

A: My day job was as a business analyst, so print was a news venture that began in 2017. So, I was part of the founding team. As you might know, Shekhar Gupta is one of the country's senior journalists. He is the founder of the print. When he began, he picked a bunch of us from Ashoka. I was helping him as a business analyst, working out of his office to build the print. So my work was finance operations and editorial product development, a lot of things together. Still, I also started writing on my interest, seeing that no one covered Tamil Nadu then. That's where I started with one opinion or a column. Then, I began writing news reports against short columns and features, et cetera. Notably, I started profiling some of the Tamil authors while I was working there.

I started doing that, at least for the Tamil literary space. Nobody outside Tamil Nadu knew these names again. So, I wanted to get these names outside Tamil Nadu. So I wrote about them. That's pretty much it when working with ‘Print’ writing, but I also continued writing. I was with them until the end of 2019 when I came to work with the Higher Education Institute in Chennai. I then worked with the government of Tamil Nadu in their industries department, heading their media team. I was still contributing parallelly. I was still writing for the print here and there. It's something I love doing, writing and seeing my byline. Yeah, that's been my writing journey. 

H: Currently, you're pursuing your master's at NYU, right? in publishing. Okay. What exactly is that in publishing? It is an alien term for me, a master's in publishing.

A: Okay. This is very interesting. So, I just found out a graduate course existed in publishing. While I was looking at some of the courses I wanted to pursue, a friend of mine, my batchmate, had taken this course. This course had two specialisations: magazine publishing and book publishing. She had done magazine publishing, and that's how I learned it. Okay, there is this course that exists. This was a time again, a Fulbright scholarship. So this is an exchange scholarship between India and the US.

S. So Fulbright Masters, Fulbright Nehru Masters Fellowship, is what it's called. They introduced a category called journalism and mass communication in 2021 while I was applying, so I thought, okay, this is the right time.  Let's give it a chance and apply under this category for the publishing program, and that's how it happened. I got through this program. The program is a holistic view of publishing a book in different formats. So we study the basics of book publishing, how to acquire a book, how to edit a book, how to market, and how to sell.

So we do have courses on marketing, publicity, and even finance. How do you do a PNL, a profit and loss statement for a book, etc.? It gives you or moulds you to enter any publishing vertical as a professional. We also study genres like children's publishing, academic publishing, romance, thriller, and some formats like podcasting and audiobooks. One exceptionally good thing about this course is meeting some big publishers within the classroom. So, most of my instructors are professionals, especially from the big four. So you get to meet them in the classroom. And that's how even the first book I acquired came from my classroom. That was one of my class assignments in the first term, and I went on to acquire ‘the details’. 

H: Congratulations. ‘The Details’, the first book you picked up, was long-listed for The Booker International. Please tell us about your engagement with Ulysses Press.  

A: So Ulysses is a small independent press in Brooklyn, and they publish a lot of pop culture, self-help, and non-fiction works. They do also have Some children's and YA imprints as well. Keith Rieger is the CEO of Ulysses. So, he's also an adjunct professor at NYU. He teaches a course in the publishing program. His family has an endowment with NYU. So, they have an internal scholarship, and I received it last spring. At that point, they offered an internship with Ulysses. So, somewhere last year, I interned with Ulysses, and when Keith asked, what do you want to do after this program? I said I wanted to start a publishing venture and bring South Asian literature into translation to the West or the global marketplace. He said, okay, let's get you started. Let's set it up. He asked me, what is the first book you want to acquire? And that's how I said, okay, the details. So The Details was one of the first books I read or worked on when I came here. One of my initial coursework assignments was an intro to book publishing, and my instructor was Tara. Parsons from Hapaviaya. So, she had just acquired that book for her publication. And we were working on that as part of our coursework. I loved that book. She also had other works to work on as part of the program coursework, but only a few of us selected this particular book because it was the only translated work. There were other works that were originally English, and this was the only translated work there. So, I picked this book and worked on it as part of my project. At that point, I decided to become a publisher when I acquired a book, and this would be my first book. And it so happened that I acquired this wonderful book when it all came along. And it's being translated. My father is translating now. It's a relay translation. We don't have a translator who can translate from Swedish to Tamil directly. So it's a relay translation. So I expect this to be published this fall in a couple of months; August or around August, September is the publication date.

H: But you said the Ulysses, they're basically into nonfiction?

A: Ulysses is currently acting as an accelerator for this imprint. So it's not fully integrated into, it's not outside imprint. Ulysses is an accelerator. But at some point, it might become a standalone publishing venture or an imprint. So that's what I'm aiming to do. So, at this point, it's currently under Ulysses. I'm taking some resources and working out, but it's been amazing. He's been mentoring me, and yeah, we also acquired another book recently. It's also a Swedish book, When the Cranes Fly South, by Lisa Risden. 

H: I hope your imprint becomes the Charco for South Asia, like what they're doing for Latin America. 

A: Yes, I'm amazed by some of these independent or small presses. Tilted Access is one, and Fitzcarraldo is another. They have been here for ten years. So, in ten years, they have done much more than the big four have done. I'm trying to take inspiration from many of these small presses that have come in recent years to win all major awards in the last ten years—five, six years of their operation. It's amazing. 

H: You are part of the contingent that is visiting India and Sri Lanka, South Asia, through the SALT initiative. 

A: Yes. 

H: What is it about? 

A: SALT is a recent initiative under UChicago. The acronym SALT stands for South Asian Literature in Translation. This body was founded by Jason, Danny, and Daniel Hahn. Danny, a more renowned translator, was my BCLT British Center for Literary Translation summer school instructor. I met Danny in New York just before BCLT. He had also come here to receive his Ottaway award. So, while we were talking, he mentioned SALT and its vision and what programs it has for publishers and translators,. They instituted a Publishers grant. And they have incredible people on the board, from Arunava, Daisy, and Jayshree Kalathil. This travel grant allows publishers from the West to do a self-directed study in India, Sri Lanka, or any South Asian country.

It's a travel grant where you come to scout for books or meet publishers and authors, do your groundwork, do ground research to know the market, and come back to commission sample translations and take them to English. So this is the process. I applied because I'm trying to work again, work this venture out as a part of Ulysses press, and take some of the world literature to Tamil.

My main motive is to translate Tamil or South Asian literature into English. And I'll be visiting. I was supposed to do this December, but things got delayed. So, I'll be visiting this May after my graduation. I intend to meet publishers, authors, translators, and the community in Tamil Nadu and the neighboring state of Kerala: Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and even Karnataka. So, I'll first concentrate on southern India and Sri Lanka and contact authors to find out what contemporary works interest me. I'm looking for contemporary works and young writers at the forefront of the literary scene.

H: So you will make the connections meeting publishers, writers, and all that, or has it been formalised? 

A:  All the selected folks make their own plans, and then they'll make their own trips. You make your own plans, schedules, and meetings. I am even thinking that if I get a chance, I will have a pitch session with translators or publishers to see if I can acquire any initial work. I wanted to come to the Chennai Book Fair, but things got delayed, and I think it was probably very hectic at that point. Harshaneeyam: You are also into translations. 

A: I'm translating from Tamil to English. I'm starting with a few short stories.

I did. I translated a Tamil author, Vijay Ravan, into one of his stories. This was long-listed for his Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2020. So, I translated it, but it never got published. It's a very long story, so, like most publications, it has a word limit of less than 5000.

H: Okay, Aananth. I wish you all the very best in your translations and publishing career. I hope to see you in India soon. 

A: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. I've followed your podcast for some time now, and it's a pleasure being here.

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