STORYTELLER: Short story writer Nayar is now working on her debut novel

When Meera Nair was discussing the details of the cover of her just-released book Video: Stories, she was vehement that it should not scream out "India". The publisher, Pantheon Books, would have nothing of that. Indianness was in vogue and the cover eventually reflected this ethos. The book launch, which is just about gathering momentum, has already drawn good reviews from trade journals, though nobody is talking numbers as yet.

The publisher may be right. It looks as though a motley mix of writers, building on the rich success of Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra, Amitav Ghosh and Anita Desai, are poised to turn the American literary scene into an Indian summer. The process was kicked off with the release of Chitra Divakaruni's Vine of Desire earlier this year. Close on the heels came Nair who was followed by Sunaina Maira with a non-fiction effort, Desis in the House. Joining them now is Bharati Mukherjee with her latest offering, Desirable Daughters. And then there is the top secret novel with a six-figure advance being worked on furiously by expecting mother Jhumpa Lahiri. And more still: Houghton Mifflin is publishing Across the Black Waters written by a second generation Indian, Minal Hajratwala. Another non-fiction effort, it will recount the Indian diaspora's experiences through the stories of the migration of the author's family from a tiny village in Gujarat to nine countries across four continents.

TAG: The cover of Nair's Video Stories reflects Indian ethos

This list is indicative of the things to come. By the initial count, it looks like there is a gender balance favouring women writers in US markets. And interestingly, almost all the works deal with the South Asian experience-either as immigrants or set in the Indian scenario. This is no coincidence. It is in many ways catering to a seemingly insatiable appetite that has been whetted in American readers.

"Yes, we are seeing more and more of immigrant and second generation experience. It is a rich subject that has been mined in American writing for years and I believe the South Asian experience is finding a voice and an audience just as the Chinese, Jews, Irish and Poles before them," says Anna Ghosh of the Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency.

As a result, the flavour of the stories have transformed from the comic depictions of immigrant experiences to more realistic reflections of their daily life. While Arundhati Roy's Booker Prize seems to have been the wake-up call for American publishers, no less important is the fact that the Indian diaspora in the US-1.7 million in the 2000 census-has left a substantial impression on the country.

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"Today it's possible to speak of Bollywood-as Vikram Chandra and Manil Suri have done-and not be met with incomprehension. It's possible to write about new immigrants not as comical stereotypes sketched by the self-consciously sophisticated westernised Indian writer but as flawed everyday people not very different from the native sub-urbanite. There is a context now for such stories to be told without the need to re-tool them for consumption," says Manini Nayar, winner of the BBC's short-story contest, now working on her debut novel.

Nayar is among the emerging new breed of South Asian writers who are products of the creative writing schools in the US. Her fellow Malayalee, Meera Nair, also came to the US to study creative writing in 1997. As a result, the new crop of writers are trained to tell a story well. And now they are being joined by a host of Indians, both fresh immigrants and second generation youth, who want to chart a path away from the traditional mould.

MISTRESS OF WORDS: Divakaruni's Vine of Desire kickstarted the year

"We are a very privileged generation. This generation of parents has been incredibly giving. They have not pressured us to go into paying fields ... they have allowed us to explore. That's why there have been so many Indians in creative writing majors," says Baltimore-based Sujata Massey, another immigrant writer who has charted her own independent path by writing ghost stories set in Japan.

However, there is no one single explanation for the sudden burst of women writers of Indian origin on the scene. The reasons vary: Some argue that savvy US publishers are exploiting the exotic of the eastern woman, especially in the wake of the Roy phenomena. "Another thing though not well researched is that the publishing industry in the US looks to profiles that make good news stories. Hence, the fascination in the US media with east Asian women. Part of this is also coupled with general interest in Asian American writing," says Rajni Srikanth, professor of English US and Asian-American Studies, University of Massachusetts.

Arguing in a similar vein, Sabina Sawhney, professor of English at Hofstra University in Long Island, maintains that while the reasons are often too complex, many of the new generation of writers are pandering to western sentiments. "Most of these women writers tend to rely on reductive stereotypes and project, quite falsely, in my opinion, a depiction of the West as a feminist utopia. That seems to be a major cause of their success."

There are others who argue that demand patterns hold the answer. "We do know that the majority of buyers of books are women. It seems natural that women readers would like stories by women writers," explains Massey.

Presumably, women deal better with sensitivity. "Women are more interested in daily experiences, more interested in how relationships in the domestic sphere change. Because we as women are most affected by this. That is why I write so much on immigrant subjects," says Divakaruni.

Vintage Books has decided to come out with an anthology of modern Indian literature-the first of its kind by an American publishing house designed for the mainstream.

Edited by Amit Chaudhuri, the book spans works beginning with Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore to the more modern superstars like Salman Rushdie, Seth and Pankaj Mishra. Edward Kastenmeier, senior editor with Vintage Books, argues that there was a need to sensitise the growing tribe of American readers to India's literary roots.

"We have done several anthologies in the past with other communities. And successfully at that. India is relatively new and we believe that such a book would appeal to the American audience. We believe that the abundant and fast emerging talent is here to stay."

How this new-found interest in the new generation of Indian origin authors plays out will be interesting to see. For the moment, they are carving a new niche for the growing numbers of the diaspora in the US and in the process burying images of the past.