The year 2022 was all about flexibility.
Conducting online sessions from cafés and hotel rooms.
Finishing an online session before boarding a bus to do an in-person session in another city.
Adjusting schedules.
Cancelling some editions of my book club because children were – finally – travelling.
Competing with swimming and cricket coaching and all the other things that weren’t factors I needed to consider at all in 2020-21.
And it’s been quite a journey. We did so much; I met so many people; I travelled extensively for work. I can’t help wondering what 2023 is going to be like!
Book Clubs
I launched my first book club in December 2020, and look how far we’ve come! Yes, we read ALL these books in 2022. I read 14 with ages nine and ten, and 18 with ages seven and eight.
Yes, there were sessions I had to cancel. In 2022, children started going to school again, and their schedules slowly filled up. Yet, before I could wonder what I was doing wrong and why people weren’t signing up, parents would write and ask me for a different time-slot. They wrote and wrote and wrote again, reaffirming that they loved the book clubs, loved reading with me … but just couldn’t fit my book club into the children’s schedule.
And that’s what keeps me going. I did have to cancel three sessions across age-groups in 2022. But that hasn’t stopped me yet!
Writing Programmes
My writing programmes remain as rewarding as ever. With children signing up time and again, it’s wonderful to see them blossom and grow. Poetry, drama, nonfiction, fiction … we’ve explored it all. Just like in 2020-21, I invited experts from various fields to address the children, and these were a treat!
During each edition of my creative writing programme, there are so many pieces I love that in April 2022, I decided I would bring these pieces together in a zine of our very own. So, June 2022 saw the launch of the first issue of WORDS, written by children aged nine to 14! The second issue came out in January 2023, and I’m sharing that here too, since all these pieces were written in 2022.
In-Person Workshops
And of course, with schools reopening, my offline workshops began again too. Teacher-training sessions took me to Nagpur, Mumbai, Aurangabad, Goa, and all over Pune. Lit fests took me to Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Vadodara and Jaipur–but more about those when I write about how 2022 was for me as a writer.
My 2023 calendar is already chalked out. My reading sessions continue, new batches are around the corner, I have sessions lined up in Mumbai and Goa … I’m waiting to see what the year brings!
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