Gautam Bhatia
The Subverse
In episode two of season four, lawyer, author, and editor Gautam Bhatia returns! When we last spoke to Gautam, he had just published The Horizon, the much-anticipated sequel to The Wall. Since then, he’s published a variety of non-fiction books, helped curate and edit a new anthology, Between Worlds, for Westland Books, and published a new sci-fi novel: The Sentence. The Sentence is genre crossing, with elements of political thrillers, murder mysteries, and old school science fiction. In it, the protagonist, Nila, is faced with an ethical, legal and political conundrum which will...
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Arcx - Gigi Ganguly
The Subverse
In the first episode of season four, host Anjali Alappat sits down with Gigi Ganguly, to discuss her debut collection of short stories, Biopeculiar: Stories of an Uncertain World (Westland Books, 2024). Gigi began her career as a journalist and, after some years of writing for newspapers, she decided to study creative writing at the University of Limerick. Her first novella, One Arm Shorter than the Other, published in 2022, got her nominated for the Subjective Chaos Kind of Award in 2023. Biopeculiar: Stories of an Uncertain World focuses on the relationship between the human and...
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Crooked Cats: The Truth Behind Beastly Encounters
The Subverse
In this episode of Stories from the Subverse, Nayanika Mathur, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford, delves into the conflict between big cats and humans. Nayanika’s book, Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene (2021), was a key source of inspiration for , which examines the intersections of capitalism through a feline lens. In this piece, Nayanika focuses on the governance of nonhuman animals, their entanglements with humans, and what the consequences are. Mathur talks about the two types of big cats—the seeda saada...
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Fragmented Forests: Raza Kazmi Talks Capitalism, Conservation, and Charismatic Wildlife
The Subverse
In this episode of Stories from the Subverse, we present our first Cataplisms audio story. The Cataplisms project examines our multispecies entanglements, critiques capitalism, and acknowledges the cataclysms at our doorstep, all through a feline lens. In this episode, we hear from someone personally and professionally invested in the fate of big cats and the forests they live in. Raza Kazmi is a conservationist, writer and wildlife historian, who focuses on East Central India. His childhood in Jharkhand’s Palamu region, surrounded by the forest’s flora and fauna, including tigers and...
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Botanical Reckonings: Reclaiming the Embrangled Vegetal from Colonial Bonds
The Subverse
In this episode, we're discussing plants, their exuberant multispecies sexualities and what we can learn from them, how botany is always interlinked with its cultural and historic context including colonialism, and an interdisciplinary approach can make one a better scientist. Host Susan Mathews is in conversation with Professor , the Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, Banu engages the feminist studies of science in the practices of experimental biology and is most recently the author...
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History, Naturally: Earth, Climate and Human Cycles
The Subverse
In the eighth episode of the season, host Susan Mathews talks to Pranay Lal, a natural history writer and climate change advocate about the dearth of interest in publishing books on natural history, the climate crises, the need for natural history museums, how the story of climate is intertwined with all other histories, and more. Pranay Lal is a natural history writer, public health expert, and climate change advocate. He is the author of two books on natural history. Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent (2016), his debut book, won the Tata Lit...
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Plastic Worlds: From Synthetic Universality to Queer Kin
The Subverse
In this episode host Susan Mathews talks to Heather Davis, the author of Plastic Matter (2022) about plastic and how it has completely permeated our world. They cover a wide range of topics from synthetic universality, technocapitalism, chemical legacies, queer kin, reproductive questions raised by plastic, and hauntings created by the aftermath of slavery and settler colonialism. Davis is a member of the Synthetic Collective, an interdisciplinary team of scientists, humanities scholars, and artists, who investigate and make visible plastic pollution in the Great...
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A Creature Called Earth: Movers, Shakers, and Rainmakers
The Subverse
In this episode, host Susan Mathews is in conversation with Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life (2024), and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American. The interview focused on the central question in the book: in what ways and to what extent has life changed the planet? From microbes to mammoths, life has transformed the continents, oceans, and atmosphere, turning a lump of orbiting rock into the world as we’ve known it. In the conversation, Jabr spoke of how Western science in particular has segregated geology from biology,...
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Earthly Matters: An Ecosophical Approach
The Subverse
We're back with The Subverse. In this episode of the season, host Susan Mathews talks to writer and ecological thinker about the current crises in modern cosmology. Ecosophy, which acknowledges the living earth, is a way to address this arrythmia and our current alienation from the earth to which we belong. Aseem Shrivastava is a writer, teacher, and ecological thinker with a doctorate in Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has lectured across the world on ecological issues emanating from globalisation. Shrivastava speaks of the present moment...
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Arcx - Vajra Chandrasekera
The Subverse
Vajra Chandrasekera returns to Arcx for our season finale. Since we last spoke, Vajra has won a Nebula award, as well as Crawford and Locus awards for his debut novel, The Saint of Bright Doors. He has also been nominated for Le Guin, Ignyte, Hugo, Lammy, and British Fantasy Awards—and we’re sure there are more in the pipeline! Vajra’s short stories, poems and articles have appeared in many publications over the years, including Clarkesworld and West Branch. He has also worked as an editor for Strange Horizons, and Afterlives: The Year’s Best Death Stories. In this episode,...
info_outlineArcx is all about literary inspiration. In this episode, we speak to short story writer, editor and novelist, Vajra Chandrasekera.
Vajra’s work is largely in the realm of speculative fiction, and he has published over a hundred pieces since 2012 in various formats. Notably, his work has been featured in Analog, Clarkesworld, West Branch, and The Los Angeles Times. He has also been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for his short story, The Translator, at Low Tide. Additionally, he was also nominated for the British Science Fiction Association award for Best Non-fiction. His debut novel, The Saint of Bright Doors was released in July 2023. His short stories have been featured in several anthologies including The Best Science Fiction of the Year, The Apex Book of World SF, and Transcendent: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction. Vajra was also part of the editorial team at Strange Horizons, and in his role as fiction editor, worked closely with several writers from all over the world. He’s also passionate about initiatives that protect the political and artistic freedoms of Sri Lankan writers and artists who have been censored and imprisoned by the state.
In this episode, we sit down to discuss some classic desi themes: colonialism, intergenerational trauma, and overblown family drama. We also touch on destiny, friendships, revolution, and terrible science fiction adaptations.
You can follow Vajra on Twitter at @_vajra and on his website Vajra.me.
Read Vajra’s Work:
The Saint of Bright Doors (Novel)
Theses on the Scientific Management of Goetic Labour
Arcx is a series of the Subverse, the podcast of Dark ‘n’ Light, a digital space that chronicles the times we live in and reimagining futures with a focus on science, nature, social justice and culture. Follow us on social media @darknlightzine, or at darknlight.com for episode details and show notes.