The Sheena Patel Wormhole
I’m a Fan: An Interview with Sheena Patel
Caitlin McLoughlin talks to poet and author Sheena Patel about her debut novel I’m a Fan.
To kick off the Worms 6 Wormholes (exclusive content from the inside of the newest issue of the magazine) we’re featuring none other than our cover star, Sheena Patel, and sharing Caitlin McLoughlin’s interview with her.
We’ve also curated a Sheena Patel Reading List for you to browse. Find snippets of her writing, interviews, features and a lot more.
Remember you can get Worms 6 here for a lot more.
A SHEENA PATEL READING LIST
I’m A Fan
In I'm A Fan a single speaker uses the story of their experience in a seemingly unequal, unfaithful relationship as a prism through which to examine the complicated hold we each have on one another. With a clear and unforgiving eye, the narrator unpicks the behaviour of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world, in turn offering a devastating critique of access, social media, patriarchal heteronormative relationships, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed.
In this incredible debut, Sheena Patel announces herself as a vital new voice in literature, capable of rendering a range of emotions and visceral experiences on the page. Sex, violence, politics, tenderness, humour—Patel handles them all with both originality and dexterity of voice.
Book Club Special
For March in the Worms Book Club we read I’m A Fan and this is what we had to say:
We drew links with Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion and The Occupation which deal with similar themes of obsession and jealousy, for a man and a woman her lover is sleeping with respectively. We also brought up Milk Fed by Melissa Broder in reference to the erotic side of the book.
We expressed concern at relating to all three characters - the narrator, the man I want to be with, and the woman I’m obsessed with - and had divided opinions on whether this was revealing of a hilarity of the book or whether it was indicative of a troublesome relationship to social media, ourselves and our chosen partners.
There were a lot of ramblings, lots of expressions of fanaticism, some haterism, all in line with the unravelling of a young racialised woman.
This interview on Dazed.
4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE
4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE are Roshni Goyate, Sharan Hunjan, Sheena Patel and Sunnah Khan. These four writers that make up this talented collective bring their radical, polyphonic performance style to bear on a series of individual pamphlets that still resonate with their collaborative force. Each author’s discreet publication is a stand-alone work, published here as a set of poetry and prose pamphlets, highlighting the daring, brilliant writing that characterises both the group and each individual author.
Find This Is What Love Is by Sheena Patel inside, a story about a recovering co-dependent, anxiety-laden, introverted-extrovert through a series of events and their aftermath across a year in her life. In prose of astonishing clarity and craft, this wildly honest exploration of the stories we tell ourselves and the tension they hold against the stories which exist out in the world, introduces a vivid new literary voice.
This Vogue feature on 4 Brown Girls Who Write.
This! So fun. Mixing popular culture and Big Thoughts is always a yes and Alina does it so well.
She talks about Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan and I’m A Fan to bring some nuance to the Hailey/Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez drama. Love love love.
