A literary exchange programme that sends books for young people across borders to find new readers

Literature Across Borders focuses on literature for young readers. Students of MA Writing for Young People at 黑料正能量 and MA English at Ashoka University are taking part, and the books represent some of the finest writers in both countries. 

As part of every exchange, the team organises the books into four thematically-related pairs. The project began in 2023 in partnership with the and the first pairings were all about 'green' issues - nature as a refuge, adventures with elephants, the ‘wildness’ of our pets, and the bravery of young people. 

" Literature across Borders was conceived as a way to ‘make books travel’, in the words of co-founder Meghaa Gupta: exchanging pairs of themed books as a basis for a dialogue across cultures and continents enables an entirely new type of discussion for students of Literature and Creative Writing."

Dr Alexia Casale, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Programme Leader for MA Writing for Young People
Headshot of a woman with reddish hair looking thoughtfully into the distance

Students explored how the books were similar and how they diverged. They also discussed the role of writing children's and YA fiction in the age of the Anthropocene – when human activities are wreaking havoc on the planet.

The climate crisis, and our broken relationship with nature, cannot be repaired by one country acting alone. Action has to be international if it is to have any power. So, if any literature is to 'travel', what type could be more important to start with than books that are inclusive of children and adults?

Aims and ambitions

We hope the exchange will help children’s books travel across countries and continents, uniting readers, writers, students and scholars on a variety of human rights issues.

Creative Writing students need to engage with a wide range of voices and perspectives to truly understand the craft, and also the richness of the literature available to them to learn from.

Through this exchange, Bath Spa's Writing for Young People team hopes to widen students' access to writers and titles that are new to them.鈥�

Exchanges

Two countries, eight children's books, five months, thirteen committed readers, four in-depth dialogues, five author interactions… Literature Across Borders got off to a flying start in 2023.

Meghaa Gupta  – the brains behind this programme – wrapped Season One with a talk at 黑料正能量’s Summer Conference, where she covered children’s publishing in India and the need to take books beyond borders. 

Pair 1: Twitch and The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street

Our first pairing looked at how the secret green places set off bold adventures. 

Read the full discussion

Pair 2: The Girl who Stole an Elephant and That Summer at Kalagarh

Our second pairing focused on elephant adventures featuring feisty girls.

Read the full discussion

Pair 3: The Wildings and Varjak Paw

Our third pairing featured feline adventures exploring the ‘wildness’ of domesticated animals.

Read the full discussion

Pair 4: My Name is River and Year of the Weeds

Our fourth pairing looked at the human relationship with land and how childhood is placed within it.

Read the full discussion

In our second year, we looked at books of fiction, memoirs as well as books in verse. 

The first pairing featured mythical adventures with green themes as explored in Fireblood by Sam Stewart and The Torchbearers by AB Majmudar

Our second pairing centred on books involving a group of children coming together to overcome the effects of different aspects of the man-made environmental crisis: The Wilderness War by Julia Green and A Cloud Called Bhura by Bijal Vachharajani.

The third pair of books looked at illustrated verse with a focus on nature and wildlife: The Lost Words: A Spell Book by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris and Beastly Tales from Here and There by Vikram Seth.

In our final pairing for Year 2, we looked at non-fiction in the form of two memoirs about wildlife, conservation, and a love of the natural world: Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty and A Naturalist's Journal by Yuvan Aves.

Read the full synopsis of each book and more about the discussions on our Year Two page.

In our third year, we looked at a range of books, from fiction to illustrated non-fiction and picture books for younger readers.

Our first pairing saw a discussion on the treatment of children living in poverty in the pairing of picture books The Invisible by Tom Percival and A Home of our Own by Meghaa Gupta and Habib Ali.

The second pair of books saw students discuss illustrated non-fiction books on ancient civilisations: Norse Myths by Matt Ralphs and Katie Ponder and The People of the Indus by Nikhil Gulati.

The third pairing involved fiction set in fantastical worlds, with a discussion on Survival Tips for Lunatics by Shandana Minhas and Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell.

The final pairing examined two fiction books exploring siblings coping with disability, featuring Dhanak: Rainbow by Anushka Ravishankar and What the World doesn't See by Mel Darbon.

Find out more about the books and links to the full discussions on our Year Three page.

In our fourth year, we explored a range of books from prose to epistolary fiction, and fictionalised biographies to illustrated short story collections.

Our first pairing was actually a trio of books focused on the Partition of India as viewed through work first published in the UK, USA and India: Torn Apart: The Partition of India by Swapna Haddow, The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani, and Across the Line by Nayanika Mahtani.

For our second pairing, we discussed children fighting for their rights in schools through Dear Mrs Naidu by Mathangi Subramanian and The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Raúf.

In pairing three, we examined fictionalised biographies of impressive women born in the 19th century: The Royal Rebel: The Life of Suffragette Princess Sophia Dul by Bali Rai and The Incredible Story of Savitribai Phule: The Fearless Reformer by Swati Sengupta.

Our fourth and final pairing of 2026 explored richly illustrated narratives woven through short stories about trees: Tracing Roots: Stories about Trees by Mallika Ravikumar and Swati Kharbanda and The Girl who Talked to Trees by Natasha Farrant and Lydia Corry.

Find out more about the books and links to the full discussions on our year four page.

We also hosted a dialogue between the , and an international .

Author-to-Author Dialogue 2026

The authors of our trio of books about the Partition of India, Swapna Haddow, Veera Hiranandani and Nayanika Mahtani, joined us for a dialogue on their work and their experience of it being first published in the UK, USA and India respectively.

The conversation was chaired by author and LaB co-founder Meghaa Gupta, with support from author and LaB co-founder Dr Alexia Casale.

International Bookseller Panel 2026

We were delighted to be joined by a panel of booksellers - including Vidya Mani from the Funky Rainbow bookshop in Bengaluru (India), Tereza Pa艡ízková from Zlata Velryba in Czechia, and Edouard Gallais from Waterstones Bristol in the UK for a dialogue on bookselling in very different socio-political and socio-cultural contexts.

The conversation was chaired by author and LaB co-founder Dr Alexia Casale, with support from author and LaB co-founder Meghaa Gupta.

2025 Author Dialogue

Authors of our illustrated non-fiction pairing Nikhil Gulati and Matt Ralphs discuss how ancient civilisations are explored through non-fiction.

Our conversation is chaired by LaB co-founder and author Meghaa Gupta, with support from author and co-founder Dr Alexia Casale.

Hooked and Booked: Understanding young readers across borders

A dialogue between children's librarians Sneha Sunder (India), Laura Bridge (UK), Eileen Lamb (USA), JoAnne Saldanha (India) on children's books across borders, with a particular focus on literature with green themes.

Chaired by LaB co-founder and author Meghaa Gupta, and author and co-founder Dr Alexia Casale (黑料正能量).

Meet the team

Meghaa Gupta鈥痟as worked in Indian children’s publishing for over a fifteen years and believes that all change begins with getting children to read books that demystify the world and its infinite possibilities. She curates a programme on nature writing for children at the Azim Premji University and was the former head of the young people’s programme at the Green Literature Festival. She writes and edits books, particularly on environment and history for young people. 

Her picture book,鈥�A Home of Our Own鈥�(Tulika, 2018) is鈥痯art of the鈥疷nited Nations Sustainable Development Goals Book Club and she is also the author of a series of history books on independent India published by Penguin Random House, that includes After Midnight: A History of Independent India.

Dr Alexia Casale is the Programme Leader of the MA Writing for Young People, 黑料正能量, and an author of YA and adult fiction. Read her full bio here. 

Professor Alexander Robert Phillips is an assistant professor of English at Ashoka University. Prior to coming to Ashoka, he taught in Germany and the United States. After studying at the University of California, Irvine and the Humboldt Universität in Berlin, he completed his PhD in German Studies at Cornell University.

He has published on literature, ecology, environmental aesthetics, and nineteenth century mass media. His forthcoming book, Ecology and German Realism: Poetics, Politics, and the Conquest of Nature explores the relationship between the representation of environmental degradation and aesthetic reflection in German literature in the years of Germany's industrialization between 1840 and 1900.

Nell Griffin is our alumna assistant, helping with various aspects of the project, including chairing one of the student dialogues. 

Nell is a creative writing graduate from 黑料正能量. In 2023, she graduated with an MA in Writing for Young People, having gained her BA (Hons) in Creative Writing also from Bath Spa in 2020.

She has led creative writing seminars at the European Forum in Alpbach, featured on a panel for Leaf Journal’s inaugural conference about writing for young people, and has since had her paper published on the journal’s website. She is currently working on her debut Young Adult novel.

Richa Chadda is doing sterling work for us on the tech and social media side of things.

Richa is an avid reader, a dreamer and a firm believer in the power of books. She is passionate about working for and with children, and is of the opinion that learning is a by-product of having fun.

With a strong interest in literature and digital technology, Richa works with klib, an organisation that provides corporate library solutions, making books and reading accessible and enjoyable for employees of organisations.

Get involved

For more information about any of the above or how to get involved, please email the team.