Anahita Karthik is a fiction writer from Pune, currently pursuing a Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, specializing in screenwriting. As an engineering grad in India, who now writes for audiences in the US, UK, and India, she occupies a rarified niche: an Indian based in India with a US agent, and books distributed across three continents. 

Karthik’s publishing journey started as a teenager trying to publish fantasy novels with small presses in India. At 23, her fiction projects include her most recent vampire love story “A Very Bloody Kalayanam” in the My Big Fat Desi Wedding anthology in 2024, her upcoming bisexual immigrant teen romance Better Catch Up, Krishna Kumar slated for release in 2026, and a colonial historical romance that is currently being shopped to presses. She brings desi young adult lenses to different genres, from contemporary rom-coms and historical fiction to horror and the supernatural. 

Driven by female, often queer, South Asian protagonists, her stories involve a search for love in a tense atmosphere or with urgent conditions. For instance, in A Very Bloody Kalayanam, the protagonist Shloka Iyer “imprints” on Krithik Nathan, who belongs to a rival Tamil vampire clan. Both characters have strong ties to their families and communities and inherit long-standing rivalries where one clan has attempted to kill the other. Karthik’s variation injects this familiar fantasy romance plot with strong undertones of violence arising from communal differences.

My Big Fat Desi Wedding was released soon after I’d first met Anahita, as we started our Masters together. During the first weeks, I learned not only of Anahita’s publishing journey but also of the global literary network of BIPOC critique partners, beta readers, and ARC reviewers she built using Discord and Twitter/X. These authors include Sujin Witherspoon, Birukti Tsige, Swati Hegde, and other up and coming writers. 

Through 2024, Anahita wrote another forbidden romance: a love triangle set in the backdrop of early independence movements, which is currently being shopped to the press. In it, the main character is married to an abusive British officer and later has an affair with a lawyer from Fergusson College, one of the oldest colleges in Pune. What struck me about Anahita’s process is her use of archival material and the inspiration she seeks from old and contemporary Bollywood and Tollywood, as well as Indian influencers trained in classical arts or invested in recreating historical aesthetics.

In addition to writing, Anahita organizes creative workshops, curates resources for writers interested in publishing, and speaks at retreats where other authors can learn about navigating publication. She also mentors emerging authors through initiatives like SmoochPit, where debut authors get to workshop their novel manuscripts with an experienced author in their genres to prepare them for submission to presses and literary agents.

What follows is an edited and translated excerpt from our conversation.

Shuchi Agrawal: Tell me about your coming book Better Catch Up, Krishna Kumar: which you say is a bisexual immigrant romance. 

Anahita Karthik: Initially, the publisher asked me to make Krishna Kumar Indian-American. Because I’ve never been to the US, I didn’t feel fully comfortable writing about someone born in America. So I made it so that she lived in India until she was 10, and then immigrated to the US. By 18, she’s lived 8 years in the US and is about to attend Johns Hopkins for pre-med. 

It’s the summer before college. Like one of us Indian kids, she has spent so much time trying to get into good universities that she’s not really had fun the way teenagers do. She’s enjoyed her two months in India and hopes for something crazy to happen with her summer crush, but nothing happens. Eventually, he goes to Goa for his second cousin’s wedding. She has a flight back to the US the next day, but it gets postponed by a week because of strikes. So she decides to go on an impromptu road trip and hopefully have a whirlwind kiss with her crush.

One of the major subplots is reconnecting with her cousin, whom she drifted away from when she moved abroad. Because that happens, right? When you live in the same place for so many years and then don’t meet as regularly, you drift apart. A lot of themes around family.

SA: How do you explore bisexuality in the book?

AK: A lot of the queer community doesn’t consider bisexual people to be “queer enough.” There’s a lot of biphobia on the internet where people are like, “If you end up with a guy, you’re not actually bisexual, right?” Ending up with a guy does not cancel your bisexuality, that’s still part of you. 

Before I wrote this book, I wasn’t a rom-com reader. But then I read quite a few and noticed that bisexual main characters usually don’t end up with a guy. They end up with a girl or a non-binary partner. I decided, you know what? I will make her end up with a guy and still own her identity. And the guy is also bisexual, which is why they bond—because they can share their identities with each other. 

SA: Yeah, bisexual people face distinct struggles. How do you get the bisexual characters in your book to own their sexuality, and how does that contrast with real life? 

AK: Being desi, if you live in India, it’s very difficult to come out. It’s a little more common in the US. Krishna is out to her parents and one of her cousins. No one else knows. One of the ways she bonds with her cousin sister and love interest is by coming out, and revealing part of herself that she doesn’t normally talk about. 

SA: Your stories seem to be set all over. You mentioned you grew up in an army family, and I feel like army families have lived everywhere. Where do Better Catch Up, Krishna Kumar and the historical take us?

AK: Yeah, I’ve traveled to or lived in almost every part of India. That’s why every book of mine is usually set in a different place. 

Better Catch Up, Krishna Kumar is set in Mumbai, Pune, Goa, and Lonavala. So it’s four places across less than a week: a whirlwind rom-com, with summer vibes. I wanted to write something that comes super easy to me and doesn’t take me much time. It took three to four months to write the whole book. That’s all, honestly. I usually take a while. In Better Catch Up, Krishna Kumar, they’re not in Pune for long, so I couldn’t explore Pune well. 

The advantage of writing a historical set in the place you’re living in is you can go and see those places anytime you want. So I could look at all of the places I was writing about. I also knew of Pune’s military history––the colonization and everything––because my dad’s in the army. 

Pune used to be called Poona before. It’s somewhere between a big city and a small town. The Army Cantt here is huge. Most army officers who get promoted to higher ranks get posted to Pune. So Pune is one of the central regions of the Indian army. I wanted to set the historical here because the British Raj set up one of their major bases in Pune. 

SA: I’ve not seen much historical fiction about Poona. What led you to it?

AK: With every book, I change genre. I wanted to explore the impact of weekly newspapers in Pune during the 1890s, when the revolution, the Indian independence movement, hadn’t properly started yet. In the 1890s, movements began coming up, but they were getting crushed by the British Raj. And the newspapers, for example, written by Bal Gangadhar Tilak ji, were the ones seeding this nationalistic view among Indians.

SA: How did you go about looking into that time? Access to archival information in India is tricky. 

AK: I spent six months researching the history before I started writing. I felt like I had to know everything about Pune in the 1890s before writing this book. I put together a document with my characters and then researched: which colleges had already been built in Pune? Which newspapers were popular in Pune then? And technology-wise, how much had we evolved? There was no electricity, so people were using gas lamps. Basic period details that I would need on every page. While I was writing, when I used a certain item or prop, I would go back and check: had this been invented in the 1890s? A lot of line-level research. 

The historical and “A Very Bloody Kalyanam” took me so long to research. I had to ask my mom, aunts, and this lady who had written blogs on Indian weddings because I didn’t want to get any rituals wrong.

SA: Your Instagram stories feature research, like character and costume design. How do you find material that inspires you?

AK: Pinterest is my best friend. Before I write a novel, I put together a mood board: pins that match the novel’s aesthetic. For Better Catch Up Krishna Kumar, I searched for Mumbai aesthetic pictures: girls in kurtis, girls wearing jhumkas, Indian street food, Mumbai skyline. That way I have a good idea of how characters look. 

I also have face claims: Instagram or Pinterest influencers, just to imagine how characters would look if a movie were made. I’m a very visual writer. I don’t plot books before I write them. The historical was probably the only one I needed to write chapter by chapter.

SA: Your stories also draw from film and mythology, right?

AK: Yeah. Indian mythology makes it into everything I write. Even if it doesn’t directly inspire the plot, there are references. Like in “A Very Bloody Kalyanam,” there was this scene where [Shloka, the protagonist] mentions the disrobing of Draupadi and how Draupadi’s husbands all stood by.

I read a lot of Amar Chitra Katha in my childhood—I have so many, 70 to 80 in my house. Then I also have Tinkle comics, short stories, and illustrated versions of books. I usually go back and read those stories, then research on Wikipedia and put my own twist on it. In my mind, while I’m writing for a global audience, I include tidbits that only Indian readers will understand. 

I’ve watched a bunch of Tamil movies, especially the famous ones. There is also a lot of Bollywood influence—in Better Catch Up, Krishna Kumar, the main character is a Bollywood buff. Many chapter titles and references she drops are from rom-coms like DDLJ (1995), Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008), and Jab We Met (2007). The vampire wedding story was inspired by these supernatural Hindi serials with dramatic family dynamics, like Nagin (2015–2023). 

SA: Has studying in the UK and mentoring writers from different countries affected your view on reaching diaspora audiences in the US and UK? How does writing and publishing for UK and US audiences work without living there?

AK: When I was in the UK, I realized many people are writing stories set in Cambridge, but there aren’t many who are writing stories set in, say Poona or Calcutta. I wanted to bring in my USP, which is stories set in India.

I’ve seen it’s more difficult to sell books set in India abroad that have characters born and raised in India than it is to sell books set in America with Indian characters. When you’re writing for an American audience, even if you don’t Americanize your characters, you have to Americanize your writing—to write in a way that the American audience is more familiar with than the Indian audience.

SA: That’s surprising. I thought readers might be interested in new locations.

AK: They are. But I haven’t seen many books actually being acquired. There are a lot of fantasies set in an Indian-inspired second world. But there aren’t many contemporary books set in India, like rom-coms and romances. 

With every year in publishing, readers are becoming receptive to newer stories: many East Asian stories set in, say, Seoul in Korea, or Beijing in China are doing well with international audiences. So there is a bit more reception for stories set in India, with characters based in India.