Selma Carvalho
Founder EDITOR
Selma Carvalho is a British-Asian writer and editor. Her debut novel Sisterhood of Swans (Speaking Tiger, 2021) was shortlisted for the Women Writers Prize (India), listed among six notable fiction books of 2021 by Asian Review of Books, and author Jerry Pinto’s top three reads of 2021 on India Today. As a work-in-progress it was shortlisted for the Mslexia Novella Prize. Her second novella Notes on a Marriage, was published by Speaking Tiger in 2024. A collection of her short stories was a finalist for the SI Leeds Literary Prize and is forthcoming from Speaking Tiger in 2025.
Her three non-fiction works Into the Diaspora Wilderness (2010), A Railway Runs Through: Goans of British East Africa (2014) and Baker Butcher, Doctor Diplomat: Goan Pioneers of East Africa (2016) document the Goan presence in colonial East Africa. Between 2011-2014, she headed the Oral Histories of British-Goans project funded by a HLF UK grant and archived at the British Library and the Bexley Libraries. She is the editor of The Brave New World of Goan Writing & Art (2018) & (2020), and The Naked Liberal: The Writings of George Menezes (2012).
In 2022, Carvalho was invited as a speaker to the Jaipur London Literary Festival. Her short fiction and poetry have been widely published and anthologised, among them by Aleph India, Kingston University Press UK and Parthian Books Wales. She has been listed or placed in numerous literary contests notably Fish, Bath, London Short Story, New Asian Writing, and winner of the Leicester Writes Prize. Her unpublished novel Horton was shortlisted for the Cinnamon Press Mentorship programme. Her unpublished novel All the Things we Cry for was longlisted for the Plaza Prizes. Her work has been translated into the Portuguese for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies, 2018.
She is currently working on a non-fiction book Half-Caste: The In-between People, Goans in Zanzibar, 1850-1910, which is represented by A Suitable Agency. She lives in London.