Selma Carvalho
Founder-Editor
Selma Carvalho is a British-Asian writer and editor. She lives in London and is represented by Naomi Barton at A Suitable Agency.
Sisterhood of Swans— “The sentences are powerful. They make us despair, they make us squirm, they make us want to pull back this girl from the brink.” The Hindu
Sisterhood of Swans— “Exquisite.” Asian Review of Books
Sisterhood of Swans— “A blistering feminist text.” The Telegraph
Sisterhood of Swants— “Disturbing, because you feel like you are entering the consciousness of a young woman.” Jerry Pinto in India Today.
Notes on a Marriage— “Read this novel for Carvalho’s unique take on the contemporary marriage and for her wonderful prose.” The Hindustan
Guts, Glory & Empire— “Selma Carvalho offers a reconceptualisation of Goan diasporic history as having been the result of the small community navigating the intricacies of multiple and overlapping political dispensations.” Scroll
Guts, Glory & Empire— “Guts, Glory and Empire is an act of profound historical healing, recovering a community that the empires of the time could never bother to acknowledge, and standing as a testament to what patient, dedicated research can achieve when mainstream history fails.” Asian Review of Books
Guts, Glory & Empire— “The reconstruction is patient and, at its best, novelistic. She will tell you the colour of a man’s horse and the contents of his drawing room.” The Telegraph
Guts, Glory & Empire— “The result is a deeply researched and compelling work of narrative history that asks difficult questions about migration, loyalty, class mobility…” Kitaab
Guts, Glory & Empire— “Selma Carvalho’s new book uncovers the forgotten story of Goans in 19th century Zanzibar, where they reconfigured public spaces.” Frontline (The Hindu)
Guts, Glory & Empire— “Guts, Glory and Empire: The Epic Story of Goans in Zanzibar, 1865-1910 narrates with grand sweep and granular detail the story of a unique community in a specific historical moment, drawing on oral histories, archival documents and sheer shoe-leather reporting.” India Today
Guts, Glory & Empire— “In anecdote after anecdote, she displays the novelist’s flair for drawing lifelike characters against the backdrop of a larger historical context.” The New Indian Express
In Fiction
Her novellas have been shortlisted by Mslexia Novella Prize and the Weatherglass Novella Prize. Her debut novel Sisterhood of Swans (Speaking Tiger, 2021) was shortlisted for the Women Writers Prize (India), listed among six notable fiction books of 2021 by Asian Review of Books, and author Jerry Pinto’s top three reads of 2021 on India Today. Her second novella Notes on a Marriage was published by Speaking Tiger in 2024. A collection of her short stories was a finalist for the SI Leeds Literary Prize and is forthcoming from Speaking Tiger in 2027. Her unpublished novel All the Things we Cry for was longlisted for the Plaza Prizes (first chapters) and is represented by A Suitable Agency.
Thirty-five of her short stories and poems have been published by Kingston University Press, Aleph Books India, Pathian Books Wales, Mechanics Institute Review Birkbeck, Lighthouse Journal, Litro and Comma Press, among others. She has been listed or placed in 40 odd literary contests notably Fish, Bath, London Short Story, New Asian Writing, and winner of the Leicester Writes Prize. Her short-fiction has been translated into the Portuguese for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies, 2018.
in Non-Fiction
Her non-fiction book Guts, Glory & Empire: The Epic Story of Goans in Zanzibar, 1865-1810 was published by Speaking Tiger in 2026, recommended by The Hindu, Caravan, Scroll, Tribune and Himal South Asian as books to read in June. Her other non-fiction works include Into the Diaspora Wilderness (Goa 1556, 2010), A Railway Runs Through: Goans of British East Africa (HLF project, 2014) and Baker Butcher, Doctor Diplomat: Goan Pioneers of East Africa (2016), which document the Goan presence in colonial East Africa. Between 2011-2014, she headed the Oral Histories of British-Goans of East Africa project funded by a HLF UK grant and archived at the British Library. She curated the first-ever exhibition of East African Goan photographs at the Nehru Centre London, and her work appears in other South Asian exhibitions in the UK.
As Editor
She is the editor of three vols of The Brave New World of Goan Writing & Art (2018) (2020) & (2025), noted by The Hindustan Times as a significant work of Goan writing, and The Naked Liberal: The Writings of George Menezes (2012) all published by Cinnamon Teal. She is the founding editor of the Joao Roque Literary Journal, which she has edited since 2017.
She was a long-time columnist for the newspapers oHeraldo and The Goan, and has been published in The Hindustan, the Deccan Herald, Readers Digest, Himal SouthAsian and The Indian Quarterly.