In the last year, Deepa translated from Kannada to English ‘Fate’s Game and Other Stories’ by Kodagina Gouramma, one of the earliest Kannada feminist writers of the 20th century, ‘The Same Village, The Same Tree.’ by Jnanapita Awardee Dr K Shivarama Karanth, as well as Bandaya Sahitya writer Banu Mushtaq’s short stories, which is forthcoming from Penguin Random House India and the UK-based publisher And Other Stories under the title ‘Heart Lamp: Selected Stories’. The book, which releases in April, has been longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, won a PEN Presents grant and a PEN Translates award from English PEN.

Deepa has been part of various literature festivals, speaking on translation and its possibilities. We spoke with her about her professional journey, future plans and more.

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What sparked your interest in literature and translation?

I’ve always been a reader. Over time, I began to also write, a poem here and a story there that would get published in the local newspaper in my town or in the school journal. I studied to be a journalist and did practice it for a few years. But I realised it was not for me and began to freelance, writing on topics that were of personal interest. So, words and books and therefore literature have always been in my life. Somewhere along the way, I wanted to get closer to Kannada, my mother tongue, and it was while pursuing that, that I began to dabble in translation as well.

You’ve mentioned sociolinguistics, land and food politics as some of your research interests. What is it about these issues that compels you to delve deeper?

I am fascinated by languages, and how personal they can be. I am also fascinated by how most of us Indians live in many languages – the one we might speak at home, the one we might speak on the streets of where we live, the one we might work in and so on. Even when we speak or read and write in one or two languages, we have an understanding of and interact with at least a few others. And the presence of these languages does something to our lived experiences. I am endlessly intrigued by how we become different people when we speak or inhabit different languages, which in turn of course influences our socio-political behaviour, belief systems, etc. We cannot separate our languages from the loaded spaces they occupy, especially now. It is the same with land and food politics too, for where we live, what we eat (or don’t eat), how our geography influences how we think and so on are deep questions whose answers, if we find them, define our lives immensely. One must note that these questions are tied to colonialism, capitalism and the rest of the isms that plague our modern world.

What have been some of the greatest highs and challenges of your professional journey so far, and what have they taught you?

As far as my writing and translation work is concerned, I think I am extremely grateful for the places it has taken me to and enabled me to have experiences I would never have dreamed of. A career in words is necessarily a masterclass in being alone – I don’t think of it as lonely because nothing connects me to the world as much as literature does. But getting to meet people and travel to places, both physically and via books, has been a precious gift. I feel like I am just getting started though, that the best is still to come. All this has reinforced my belief that words – not just the written word, but really, all the stories we tell and listen to – can, have and will change the world.

What next? What are some of the projects that you’d like to work in the near future?

I am very excited about my forthcoming book ‘Heart Lamp’ that will have a world release in April 2025. The early reviews have been very encouraging. I am also looking to focus on my own writing in the near future, and am working on a novel, some short stories and a non-fiction book. I am also looking forward to translating from Kannada again, and will be reading widely in the language before I choose my next project.