HarperCollins announces online forum to assist aspiring writers

New Delhi: Publisher HarperCollins and The Himalayan Writing Retreat have announced a collaboration to bring authors and industry experts under an online forum where they will interact with aspiring writers to improve their work.

'The First Draft Club' (FDC) is a charitable initiative that assists many writers in completing their first drafts by providing community support and guidance, the publishing house said.

"At HarperCollins, our motto is simple: READ. For all of us to be able to read more, we need more writers - and we need them to write more and more. I'm hugely appreciative of the work The Himalayan Writing Retreat is doing in enabling aspiring writers and helping them to shape their work. We're very pleased to be able to partner on the First Draft Club this May - we'll have some of our lead authors and a very experienced publishing editor participating in the sessions," Udayan Mitra, executive publisher at HarperCollins India, said.

Starting from May 7 with Anukrti Upadhyay, the author of "Daura" and "Bhaunri", HarperCollins experts will meet with FDC participants and guide them through different facets of writing, editing, and publishing.

On May 14, the author of "Nehru: The Debates that Defined India", Tripurdaman Singh, will lead the aspiring writers on their journey.

The next two Sundays, HarperCollins' associate publisher Swati Chopra and Akash Singh Rathor, the author of "Becoming Babasaheb: The Life And Times of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar", will attend the online sessions, respectively.

The proceeds from this initiative go to the students of Chirag, a charitable NGO-run school.