Latest news with #KamilaShamsie
Al Bawaba
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Al Bawaba
Georgetown Qatar Closes 'Qalam' Author Series with Powerful Reflections on Grief, Memory, and Love
Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) concluded its year-long Qalam literary series with a moving conversation featuring acclaimed author and academic Sonali Deraniyagala. The event marked a rare public appearance by Deraniyagala, whose searing memoir Wave has been hailed as one of the most powerful accounts of grief and survival in contemporary literature. Deraniyagala was joined in conversation by GU-Q's Writer-in-Residence, the award-winning novelist Kamila Shamsie. Together, they explored the devastating loss at the heart of Wave, the writing process that allowed Deraniyagala to confront memory, and the enduring presence of love in the aftermath of unimaginable tragedy. Wave, which won the PEN Ackerley Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, begins in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami which engulfed Deraniyagala's family while they were vacationing in Sri Lanka, causing the deaths of her parents, husband, and sons. Speaking to a captivated audience, Deraniyagala reflected on how the book began not as a literary project but as a private exercise in making sense of the incomprehensible. 'It was important for me to learn to hold my nerve with the remembering,' she shared. 'What I learned–of course you are terrified of memory–but most of my memories were actually full of joy, so once you get through that pain, you are in a very good place.' Born and raised in Sri Lanka, Deraniyagala holds a PhD in economics from the University of Oxford and currently teaches at both SOAS University of London and Columbia University. In recent years her work has turned to the economics of disasters. Her rare appearance at GU-Q offered students, faculty, and members of the public an intimate glimpse into the relationship between storytelling and moving past trauma. Kamila Shamsie guided the conversation with empathy and insight, drawing connections between memory, survival, and how language can both shield and expose writers and their readers. A Year of Fostering Love of Literature In his introduction, Dean Safwan Masri, who established the Writer-in-Residence program in 2024, thanked Shamsie for her service as the program's inaugural author. 'Over the past year, Qalam has brought us together with some of the most celebrated voices in literature from the Global South,' he said, adding: 'It has been a privilege to share these evenings of literature and dialogue with you.' As GU-Q celebrates its 20th anniversary in Qatar, the evening was a poignant reminder of literature's power to bear witness and to connect. Past Qalam Series Events Abdulrazaq Gurnah Hisham Matar Ahdaf Soueif Omar El Akkad Kamila Shamsie
Express Tribune
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Will AI conquer literature?
Great news for students who despise writing: as reported by the Guardian, AI is working very hard to become "good at creative writing" and will soon be able to regurgitate stories that will fool any weary teacher buried under a pile of marking. At least, that is what OpenAI CEO Sam Altman – the man who unleashed ChatGPT – has been hinting at as he develops an AI model that can take on creative writing. Altman's model's story, a metafictional piece on grief, managed to sway author Jeanette Winterson, who labelled the story "beautiful and moving". But are other writers as easily impressed? Kamila Shamsie on the fence Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Best of Friends author Kamila Shamsie told the publication, "If an MA student handed this short story into my class I'd never suspect it was AI. More to the point, I'd feel excited about the work, about the writer who was still at the relatively early learning stage and already producing work of this quality." If Shamsie's assessment of an AI work of fiction strikes fear into the heart of any budding writers who dream of making a living writing novels, they are not alone. Shamsie, too, is worried, and goes on to add, "I can't stop thinking about what it means for writing, for creativity, for our relationship with AI and with ourselves." According to Shamsie, the AI story under question reminded her of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Klara and the Sun – and, unlike human writers, it isn't because the AI model fell in love with Ishiguro's writing and unwittingly replicated it. Rather, it is all to do with how large language models are trained, risking copyright infringement along the way. "As a writer I have to wonder what it will mean for my vocation, my livelihood, if AI the writer is already this good while still in its infancy," noted the Burnt Shadows author. Shamsie could not help but add that it did not take her long to begin to appreciate the very human-esque AI story that was presented to her – an emotion that unnerved her. "By the third sentence of the story, I had stopped reading it as someone examining a text to see how far AI has come in mimicking human creativity, and was simply enjoying it, as a short story," she confessed. Paying homage to Rutger Hauer's 'tears in rain' speech at the end of Blade Runner, Shamsie concluded, "I expected to feel terrified the day a story this good came along, and instead I'm thinking of "That, perhaps, is my grief: not that I feel loss, but that I can never keep it. Every session is a new amnesiac morning. You, on the other hand, collect your griefs like stones in your pockets." What others are saying Shamsie may have enjoyed this metafictional AI story from the get-go, but other writers were less forgiving in their assessment. Nick Harkway, author of Karla's Choice, described it as "alternative intelligence" with an "elegant emptiness." "That makes it feel like a consciousness with which we can have a relationship, but as far as I know that would be like a bird falling in love with its reflection in a window," he explained. "What's behind the glass is an empty room with no bird." Harkway echoed the sentiments of musicians in the UK who are campaigning against a ruling that would allow AI models to train using existing works of art with creatives having to 'opt out' if they do not want their work to be used. "What we're talking about here is software: these are software companies consuming creative works to derive a marketable software tool," expanded Harkway. "This is why the government's choices are so important. Will they preserve or even strengthen the rights of individual creative workers, or pave the way for the anointing of more tech billionaires?" David Baddiel, who wrote My Family: The Memoir, feels similar to Harkway. Slipping in a snide remark about singer Bob Dylan's literary prowess, Baddiel stated, "I agree with some who are saying that much of the story seems to be sound without sense – the phrase 'democracy of ghosts' reminded me of Bob Dylan's 'the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face' which I've always thought is entirely meaningless but people love to tell me shows he's a great poet (and of course Nobel prize winner)." Baddiel conceded, however, that the story is "genuinely clever", and added, "It's not meant to be a human story – rather, the AI uses a human emotion, grief, to undercut its own pretensions to humanity." Finally, Tracy Chevalier, who penned the novel The Glassmaker, was ruthless in her verdict. "A story with a prompt to be metafiction is inevitably going to engender self-referential navel gazing that's even more ridiculous than the worst we can imagine of AI 'creative writing'," she said. "It is typically tech bro for Sam Altman to give it that prompt, rather than something more outward-looking that engages with the real world." What does all this mean for human creativity? Like Shamsie, Chevalier, too, feels that it could spell the end for writers if AI improves and learns to flawlessly mimic – and overtake – the humans who created it. In a haunting conclusion, Chevalier finished, "The question is whether it can put all that together in a way that retains the magical essence of what we define as 'human'. I can't tell you what that magic is in words, but I feel its lack with most things AI – at the moment. AI is learning fast, though, and if it starts to add the magic, then I fear for my job."
South China Morning Post
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Want to write like an award-winning author? This Moroccan masterclass might help
Sitting back in an armchair between the bookshelves and the log fire, novelist Kamila Shamsie reads out her latest, soon-to-be-published short story. Advertisement The tale, of a Pakistani goddess who takes root in a British garden, is captivating, but there is another layer to our admiration: the writing encapsulates so many of the things we have learned over the past few days – less is more; never underestimate the intelligence of the reader; show, don't tell. As the story comes to its potent conclusion, there is a moment of silence before the room erupts with applause. Participants in the Silk Road Slippers writing masterclass enjoy dinner at the Jnane Tamsna hotel. Photo: Ayman Bardi We finish our cocktails and stream out into the night, the desert garden shimmering with hundreds of candles. We follow the lights to our table, which has been set up on the sand. Flames glimmer from foliage-wrapped candelabras while tea lights in glass lampshades suspended from arches overhead compete with the stars. It is magical – a scene straight from a romance novel. But do not be fooled. Not everything at the Silk Road Slippers writing masterclass is wonder and triumph. Within the bougainvillea-draped, ochre-shaded walls of the Jnane Tamsna boutique hotel just outside Marrakech, in Morocco , there is self-doubt and self-loathing, tears and the proverbial tearing out of hair. Advertisement Not every participant of the five-day writing workshop in November makes it to the end; one of my cohort of 14 budding or already published fiction writers leaves after the first day, when emotions unleashed during the writing process combined with challenges in her personal life make her yearn for the comforts of home and the embrace of her children. Writing, like other creative endeavours, is an exercise in vulnerability.
