ELIZABETH CHAKRABARTY is an interdisciplinary writer who uses creative and critical writing, besides performance, to explore themes of race, gender and sexuality. Her debut novel Lessons in Love and Other Crimes, inspired by experience of race hate crime, was published in 2021 by The Indigo Press, along with her essay 'On Closure and Crime'. In USA Lessons in Love and Other Crimes was selected as a Top-Shelf title for promotion in the Trafalgar Square/ IPG Fall 2021 campaign to retailers and libraries. Translation rights are with The Marsh Agency.

In 2022 Elizabeth Chakrabarty was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize, the UK's only awards for LGBTQ+ books, and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, for the most outstanding debut novel of the past 12 months. She also was shortlisted for the Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction, for which her story will be published in an e-anthology by Comma Press. Her story 'Eurovision' was shortlisted for the Asian Writer Short Story Prize in 2016 and published in Dividing Lines (Dahlia Publishing, 2017). Her poetry has been published by Visual Verse, and her short creative-critical work includes writing published in Glänta, Gal-Dem and New Writing Dundee, and more recently in Wasafiri, and the anthology Imagined Spaces (Saraband, 2020). She received an Authors' Foundation Grant from The Society of Authors (UK) in December 2018, to support the writing of Lessons in Love and Other Crimes, and she was chosen as one of the runners up for the inaugural CrimeFest bursary for crime fiction authors of colour in 2022. She lives in London.

Tesya has reasons to feel hopeful after leaving her last job, where she was subjected to a series of anonymous hate crimes. Now she is back home in London to start a new lecturing position, and has begun an exciting, if tumultuous, love affair with the enigmatic Holly. But this idyllic new start quickly sours. Tesya finds herself victimized again at work by an unknown assailant, who subjects her to an insidious, sustained race hate crime. As her paranoia mounts, Tesya finds herself yearning for the most elemental of desires: love, acceptance, and sanctuary. Her assailant, meanwhile, is recording his manifesto, and plotting his next steps.  Inspired by the author’s personal experiences of hate crime and bookended with essays which contextualise the story within a lifetime of microaggressions, Lessons in Love and Other Crimes is a heart-breaking, hopeful, and compulsively readable novel about the most quotidian of crimes.

Download her exclusive essay On Closure and Crime, written to support the publication of her novel, a free e-book on The Indigo Press website

REVIEWS:

Nikita Gill, author of Wild Embers: "One of the most gripping and powerful books I´ve ever read; I feel so represented as a queer, brown woman."

Cosmopolitan: "A story you won't be able to get out of your head"

Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young: "Fierce, contemporary and completely absorbing…a fresh and forensic novel asking ages-old questions – what makes a writer? What makes a lover? And pressing for our moment now – what makes a racist? Part thriller, part elegy to modern British live…Formally inventive and erotically charged, compassion and intelligence shine through every sentence Chakrabarty writes."

Catherine Mayer: "Gripping and unnerving, a story about the relentlessness of racism."

Tessa McWatt: "An important new voice for our troubled times. Vibrant and passionate storytelling."

Winnie M Li: "A thoughtful exploration of everyday racist aggressions (both micro and more significant) — and the impact they can have on an individual's personal and professional life."

the i paper "An innovative hybrid novel…a multi-layered and thought-provoking work... At the end, Chakrabarty takes a sharp turn into thriller territory, with a dramatic resolution worthy of The Girl on the Train."

Zahra Iqbal, Bad Form Review "Elizabeth Chakrabarty's heartfelt and addictive story is paramount considering the current climate. Her honest approach encourages audiences to discuss the topics unearthed in the book and despite, the awful crimes detailed in the novel, gives a sense of community."

ARTICLES:

Wasafiri, On Evil (Crime in the Academy)

Gal-dem, Travelling to Catalonia and coping with racism in a foreign language

Follow on Twitter

Follow on Instagram

Visit her website