Our October Book of the Month is...

Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods is an unflinching collection of poems that weave between topics from violence against women, to time and memory. Tishani Doshi’s third full collection in English, it blends visceral power with artistic elegance, re-imagining form as it sifts through detail and emotion.

Peter Florence, director of Hay Festival, said: “Essential and immediate, Tishani Doshi launched her new collection, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, at Hay Festival 2018 and it continues to make waves, here and around the world. In this month of poetry – National Poetry Day is on Thursday 4 October – here’s an essential new collection for our times from one of the world’s most captivating artists and writers.”

Poet, writer and dancer Tishani Doshi was born in Madras, India, to Welsh and Gujarati parents. Her first book of poetry, Countries of the Body (2006), won a Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her subsequent collections include Everything Begins Elsewhere (2013) and Dolce Marcescenza (Sweet Decay).

Doshi’s first novel, The Pleasure Seekers (2010), was shortlisted for the Hindu Best Fiction Award and has been translated into several languages. She is also the author of Fountainville: New Stories from the Mabinogion (2013), a retelling of the Mabinogion myth, as well as two books about place and home, Madras Then Chennai Now (2013) and The Adulterous Citizen (2015). Her honours and awards include an Eric Gregory Award and an All-India Poetry Prize.

Chosen by the festival team in Hay-on-Wye, based on public recommendations, the Book of the Month promotion revisits and re-celebrates great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry that reach through time to touch the present.

Titles are sold in the UK through the festival’s online shop, as well as being available in all good libraries and bookshops, with a digital festival of promotion supporting online, including curated streams on the festival’s new Hay Player archive.