The Diverse Bookshelf
Welcome to The Diverse Bookshelf. I’m Samia Aziz, celebrating the power of literature and the voices of authors and change makers from the global majority. Join me as we explore the stories that inspire, connect, and transform our world. Each week I interview an inspiring guest about a whole host of themes and issues while focusing on diverse literature.
Let’s uncover the stories that truly matter—together.
The Diverse Bookshelf
Sunny Singh on war, love and stories that refuse silence
This week, I'm thrilled to be in conversation with Professor Sunny Singh.
Sunny Singh was born in India and over the years her life has spanned continents and languages. She earned a BA in English and American Literature at Brandeis University, followed by a master’s in Spanish Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a PhD from the University of Barcelona. Over time, she has written novels, creative nonfiction, essays, and short stories; she also serves as Professor of Creative Writing and Inclusion in the Arts at London Metropolitan University.
Beyond her writing, Sunny has been a powerful force for literary equity. In 2017 she launched the Jhalak Prize, a prize for writers of colour in the UK and Ireland, and continues to engage deeply with questions of decolonisation, representation and the literary ecosystem. In recognition of her contributions to letters, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Her new short story collection, Refuge: Stories of War (and Love) (released August 2025) is a striking, ambitious volume that brings into conversation the most urgent and often silenced narratives of conflict, displacement, and resilience. Over its dozen or so stories, the collection moves across continents and histories - touching on war zones, refugee lives, gendered violence, memory, and the possibility of tenderness even amid devastation.
What sets Refuge apart is how it refuses easy binaries: perpetrators sometimes carry scars of suffering; survivors negotiate moral compromise and loss; the stories do not dwell on revenge but insist on empathy, nuance, and the endurance of human dignity. Still, the collection does not shy away from brutality—sexual violence, war crimes, colonial legacies—and the way these violences embed themselves in bodies, histories, homes and memory. And yet the final gesture of many of these stories is not surrender. They gesture toward renewal, connection, and the redemptive potential in telling the stories we fear.