Meet the author-poet-activist who won the Hermann Kesten Prize 2022

• Meena Kandasamy’s is an author, poet and activist. Through works such as Ms Militia (2010); The Gypsy Goddess (2014), and When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (2017), she has explored themes of caste, gender, violence and marginalisation. Her repertoire includes four collections of poetry, three novels and two biographical accounts, including one that details a brief marriage where Kandasamy battled domestic violence. She has been named the winner of the Hermann Kesten Prize 2022 by PEN Centre Germany, for defending free speech and the rights of the marginalised. Here she discusses the nature and future of storytelling.