Stories and feelings. That’s what you’ll find here.
Hi, I’m Huma Qureshi. Welcome! I’m the award-winning writer of four books (more on those below) and this is Reading Alice & Others, where I share my notes and thoughts on my favourite short stories, inviting you to do the same.
You can read all about Reading Alice & Others, and why it exists, in my welcome post.
Reading Alice & Others is simply another joyful place to share my writing online, writing about a subject which I deeply love: short stories. If you so wish, you might want to check out my existing newsletter, Dear Huma, an agony aunt newsletter on writing and life, described by a subscriber as ‘the most beautiful email I’ve ever read.’
On my website, you can also find out about the writing courses I teach. Some of my past students have said lovely things about how my courses have inspired them, such as ‘I’ve fallen back in love with writing again’ and ‘I feel so held and you have been so generous with what you know.’
Whilst you’re here, might I introduce you to my books? My novel Playing Games came out in November 2023, to lovely reviews - described as ‘Beautifully written’ in the Daily Mail, ‘A gem of a novel’ in the i paper, ‘Poignant and impressionistic’ in the Guardian. It’s about two sisters, Hana and Mira, who are very different but more similar than they care to admit. It’s about fiction, and borrowing from real life in the name of art, and it’s about betrayal and love; it asks what you can borrow from your sister, when it comes to her private life, and what can be forgiven when you take without asking.
I’m also the author of the short story collection Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love, a collection of stories about the secrets we keep from those we love most, and also from ourselves, and the memoir How We Met: A Memoir of Love and Other Misadventures, a coming of age story, ostensibly about how I met my husband, but more about how I met myself first.
I hope you enjoy reading my writing wherever you may find it, whether in books or newsletters. And I hope Reading Alice & Others does for you what it does for me, which is that it takes me out of my head and allows me to escape into another world for a while.
Thank you for being here.
With love,
Huma x
