We have welcomed our 12th resident for the year Shriya – her creative practice (plays, film scripts, short stories, and poems) focuses on people’s daily life rendered extraordinary by their unique personal experiences.
In 2015 Shriya produced her first photo project titled ‘the Backstory Project’. ‘Backstory’ told the stories of migrants as they make Auckland their new home. The project culminated in an exhibition which showed New Zealand’s largest city through new eyes.
Since then, Shriya has written poems, short stories, short films, feature films and plays. Her work is across categories and genres in English, Hindi and Marathi.
After Covid 19 related setbacks in 2020 and 2021, a play written by Shriya (her first) titled ‘Kamasutra Chronicles’ made it to the stage at the Basement Theatre in Auckland in January 2022.
Her work has been published in Blackmail Press (poetry), and short stories have appeared in the Coldnoon Literary Journal, Branch and Root – the Anthology of the Trees (Shooting Star Press, Australia), the anthology Ko Aotearoa Tātou /We Are New Zealand (Otago University Press) and A Clear Dawn: New Asian NZ Writing (Auckland University Press) just to name a few.
A collection of short stories exploring everyday life in Mumbai, was selected for the 2019 NZSA CompleteMS programme.
In another life and a different decade, Shriya briefly worked as a rookie crime reporter for a national newspaper in Mumbai, India.
Shriya will spend her time during her residency developing a new collection of short stories set in Auckland. Based around her own experience, (and that of other immigrants), of making a life in the city and making it their own, whilst going through a process of grief for the loss of who they were even as they are celebrating who they are becoming.