Shila Desai

Like ingredients tossed into a pot in varying quantities to create a multitude of tastes, Shila’s writing draws on the influences of her life on three continents. Her childhood in an extended Indian family in Kenya yields a cornucopia that unearths universal coming of age truths. In the UK and subsequently Canada, she honed her writing to capture the immigrant experience in a western society. She believes a deftly and delicately executed work of short fiction builds bridges by opening up hitherto esoteric worlds to differing sides of the socio-economic divide, especially prevalent in a metropolis like Toronto. Shila, a CA in her first incarnation, succumbed to the lure of the written word and attended the University of Toronto’s Creative Writing Program, from which she graduated with honours. Her debut work, “The Tangerine Conundrum”, was published in TOK3. She is currently working on a set of creative non-fiction stories, based on true events that occurred while growing up in Kenya. She lives in Thornhill with her husband, two daughters and her African Grey parrot, Mithoo.