KATHMANDU: The sixth volume of La.Lit (new fiction from Nepal), and These Fine Lines: Poems of Restraint and Abandon, an anthology of poems by Nepali female poets were launched on May 14. Different personalities including author Manjushree Thapa, Rabi Thapa, Editor of La.Lit and Itisha Giri, Editor of These Fine Lines, jointly launched the book at an event held in Gahanapokhari.

Two volumes of La.Lit are published every year and each volume contains short stories, poems, photographs, graphic novels and reports. The sixth volume is different as it contains only short stories.

The 19 short stories are penned by the winners of Quixote’s Cove’s Writing Nepal competition chosen by author Samrat Upadhyay, 10 short listed writers selected by La.Lit editors, and established writers.

Talking about La.Lit, Rabi shared, “This volume gives a good survey on Nepali writers writing in English and tells us who will be established in the literary field in the next five years.”

Meanwhile Manjushree expressed, “Both publications seem to ask questions related to identity —  be it the identity of women, Madheshi, or the identity based on caste.

They raise questions on the kind of people we are, how are we choosing to be Nepali and how we are choosing to relate to Nepal. In terms of diversity in subject, La.Lit has stories of migrant worker, Jung Bahadur Rana, school children in village, journalist in slums of Mumbai, restaurant worker in the USA and more.

It was a fantastic reading experience. It would be interesting to see the poems of These Fine Lines translated into Nepali and have a productive dialogue on them which talks about two visions of feminism — essentialism and post-modern or post-structural point of view.”

In the poetry collection, there are 26 poems by 26 female poets. And these poems are about women, their true reflection and the issues like what defines them as women, as per Giri.