Do It The Write Way

Singaporean author Balli Kaur Jaswal’s book was recently picked up by Reese Witherspoon for her book club. And it’s probably not her final brush with Hollywood.

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WHO IS SHE: Balli Kaur Jaswal, 34, author of Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows (ESFPW), a novel about the lives of women in a close knit Punjabi community in London. If it sounds familiar to you, you’ve probably read about how the book was recently chosen by Reese Witherspoon for her book club, which boasts over 440K Insta-followers. “I’m elated! I've really enjoyed [Reese’s] book club picks, and I think it's great that she's using her broad fan following to get more people on board with reading,” says Balli. This isn’t the first time the book has garnered attention — it was picked up by Harper Collins for a six-figure sum after a reported bidding war with five other publishers in 2016. To add icing to the cake, movie rights to ESFPW were also sold for an undisclosed sum to Ridley Scott’s production company last year. While ESFPW is Balli’s big break, she is no greenhorn. Her rise arguably began when she received a £25,000 (S$46,400) writing fellowship at the acclaimed University of East Anglia in 2007, which counts recent Literature Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro as its alumni. The writer’s debut work, Inheritance, won Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelist Award in 2014, and her second novel