Sudha Menon is an author of book Feisty at Fifty.
Read:FEISTY AT FIFTY BY SUDHA MENON- BOOK REVIEW
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Website: www.sudhamenon.com
Email: sudhamenon2006@gmail.com
Amazon: www.amazon.com/author/sudhamenon

About the Author

Sudha Menon is the author of five non-fiction books including her latest, Feisty At Fifty, Legacy, Gifted and Devi Diva or She Devil. She is the founder of writing workshop series, Get Writing and Writing With Women. She is also a speaker on gender, diversity and inclusion and women’s leadership at corporate and educational campuses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudha_Menon Show original message

Interview

1: What are your interests other than writing?
I am an avid reader, I love nature and travelling, plays, music and meeting people. I am pulled to people and love listening to their stories. Which is why I run a voluntary project, Telling Your Stories through which I help elderly people write down their stories. 

2: What inspires you in life?
Nature inspires me. The unflagging spirit of human beings who face the toughest challenges, survive and live their life with dignity inspires me. My mother’s spirit and her determination at 71 inspire me. When I am down and out and think of giving up, I look at her, lonely after the death of my father three years ago. If she can beat depression and spring back to life, what excuse do I have to whine and mope about?  

3: What other genres do you enjoy reading?
I love fiction. I like stories with well-etched characters and a narrative that pulls you right into the story and keeps you riveted till the end. Not very fond of graphic novels and super hero stuff though. 

4: Which of your novels best describes you as a person?
I write non-fiction and I am very much like the strong women whose journeys I write about. In fact, I think I have learnt a lot from the women I have written about including PT Usha, the legendary athlete whose life inspires me a lot. 

5: Have you ever written a character based on the real you in some part?
Great parts of my new book, Feisty At Fifty, is about my own life though I have used artistic license to amplify some bits and parts of it. 

6: A first book that you read?
I don’t remember the first book that I read but I recall so many happy summer afternoons lolling on the veranda in my ancestral home in coastal Kerala, reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird and so many American and Russian classics. Each of them left an imprint on my mind.  

7: Tell us about your Favourite author?
There are so many of them but my go-to author to pick me up, always, is PG Wodehouse. His work is such pure joy and even today, so many decades after I first read him, he continues to fascinate me and tickle my funny bone. I also love reading Maya Angelou, Jhumpa Adventures, Arundahati Roy, Sashi Deshpande, Margarat Atwood, Carol Shields and so many other women writers.  

8: What are Your thoughts on Indian literature?
There are wonderful Indian writers who write in English and I find their work fascinating, intriguing and so true to who we are. I find the snobbery of those who only read foreign writers very strange. It is my intention to someday learn my mother tongue and read all the great works of literature in Malayalam. thankfully, there seem to be a lot of good quality translations of great literary work in other Indian languages and I make it a point to read as much as I can.