Bidisha Ershad

Bidisha Mamata is a British broadcaster and journalist specialising in international affairs, social justice issues, arts and culture.

Bidisha began writing professionally for style magazines such as ''i-D'', '' Dazed and Confused'', and the '' NME'', at the age of 14, and published her first novel at 18. She writes for '' The Guardian'' and '' The Observer'' and works as a TV and radio presenter for the BBC, presenting programmes including '' Woman's Hour''.

She also does outreach work in UK detention centres and prisons, in affiliation with literary and human rights organisation English PEN.

Early life and education

Bidisha was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, an independent school in Elstree in Hertfordshire, followed by St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford,List of famous graduates
of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. where she studied Old and Middle English. She then studied at the London School of Economics, where she gained an MSc in Moral and Political Philosophy and Economic History.

Writing

Bidisha began writing for arts magazines ''i-D'', '' Oyster'', ''Volume'', '' Dazed and Confused'', and the '' NME'' at 15, after launching a style fanzine at age 14 influenced by the riot grrrl subculture. In 1995, at the age of 16, Bidisha signed a £15,000 book deal with HarperCollins. Her first novel, ''Seahorses'', was published two years later, during her first year at university.The Times Educational Supplement'', 21 March 1997. Retrieved 26 May 2010. During this time she also had regular opinion columns in '' The Big Issue'' magazine, '' The Daily Telegraph'' and the Thursday edition of '' The Independent'' newspaper. Bidisha's second novel, the thriller ''Too Fast to Live'', was published when she was 21. Her third book, ''Venetian Masters'' – a travel memoir – was published in February 2008. She was a contributing editor of the women's literary magazine ''Sibyl'' and the style magazine ''2nd Generation'', and has written for '' The Guardian'', the '' Financial Times'', '' Mslexia'', '' The Observer'', '' New Statesman'', and arts magazine ''The List''.

International affairs were the subject of ''Venetian Masters'' (2008), which focused on Northern Italy, and ''Beyond the Wall'' (2012), a work of reportage from Palestine. In 2013, she became a Fellow of the International Reporting Project run by Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her role is to focus on international development issues as part of a global network of reporters. Her fifth book, ''Asylum and Exile: The Hidden Voices of London'', is based on her long term outreach work with asylum seekers and refugees.

Bidisha was one of the judges for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction, and was announced as one of the judges of the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She is a patron of the SI Leeds Literary Prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women in the UK. Bidisha is a trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation.

Broadcasting and film-making

In parallel with her writing, Bidisha has developed a career as a radio and TV arts critic and presenter. She is a regular guest on ''The Big Questions'' and ''Sunday Morning Live'' ( BBC One), and also appeared as a regular panellist on BBC Two's '' Newsnight Review'' (BBC Two). For BBC Radio 4 she has contributed regularly to and presented '' Saturday Review'', '' Front Row'', '' Archive on Four'', ''Heart and Soul'' and '' Woman's Hour''. She was one of the regular presenters of BBC Radio 3's flagship arts programme, '' Night Waves''.

On the World Service, she was a guest presenter of the books programme '' The Word'', and was the regular presenter for '' The Strand''. For Radio 3 and Radio 4 she has presented documentaries on Carl Jung, Iris Murdoch, the role of text in art (in ''Texting Andy Warhol'') and ''The Countertenor''. On TV she presented BBC Four's Secret Life of Books series edition on ''Jane Eyre'' and the ''Archive on Four'' documentary ''Mustn't Grumble'', on complaining.

In 2017, she directed the 7-minute solo project ''An Impossible Poison'', which was commissioned by the arts organisation Speaking Volumes and premiered in Berlin in November 2017. Her next visual project was a series of video shorts called the Aurora series, of which the first is ''Aurora: All is Well'' (October 2020).

Films

*
An Impossible Poison
', 2017
*
Aurora
' series, 2020-present

Bibliography

*''Seahorses'' (Flamingo, 1997)
*''Too Fast to Live'' (Duckworth Publishing, 2000)
*''Venetian Masters'' (Summersdale Publishers, 2008)
*''Beyond the Wall: Writing A Path Through Palestine'' (Seagull 2012)
* ''Asylum and Exile: The Hidden Voices of London'' (Seagull 2015)
* ''The Future of Serious Art'' (Tortoise Media, 2020)

References

External links

Official web siteColumn archive
at '' UnHerd''
Column archive
at the '' HuffPost''
Column archive
at '' The Guardian''
Column archive
at the '' New Statesman''
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bidisha
1978 births
Living people
People educated at Haberdashers' Girls' School
Alumni of St Edmund Hall, Oxford
Alumni of the London School of Economics
BBC radio presenters
British journalists
British people of Indian descent
British radio personalities
British women journalists
English feminists
English women novelists
People from Southgate, London
The Guardian journalists
British women radio presenters