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[ essay club ]

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An invitation to practise curiosity with and through essays. 

Interior
Exterior

[ essay club ]

join gift

An invitation to practise curiosity with and through essays. 

Interior-Exterior Essay Club

We read an essay every month, slowly and together.

Why the essay?

Because it is the form that holds so many of our capacities that are worth nurturing. Curiosity. Sitting with uncertainty. Dialoguing to understand something. Following the arc of a feeling into the past, onto the world. Following the arc of the I to the we, human to more-than-human. I believe these are capacities worth tending to, and paying close attention to essays is one way of doing that.

The essay club begins in August 2026.
Join now at the founding-member price.

Your annual membership includes:

12 essays. 12 slow-reading sessions. 12 guest lectures. 12 write-along sessions. Notes and recordings.

Essay of the month

A chosen essay is sent to you at the beginning of each month. Annotated notes follow at the end of the month.

Slow-reading

A 70-minute online session devoted to this essay. The first 30-40 minutes are spent reading slowly. Post that, Ankita presents observations. Happens every second saturday, 6PM IST.

₹5000

/ year

gift

By subscribing, you agree to our Terms and Conditions.

₹700

/ month

gift

By subscribing, you agree to our Terms and Conditions.

Library

Attend what you can. Recordings, annotated notes, and writing prompts from your membership period—are collected in one place for you to return to anytime.

Guest session

A 70-minute online conversation with a guest writer or editor. Through an essay of their own or one that has shaped them, they talk about reading, writing, and thinking through the form. Upcoming guests include Sumana Roy, Paromita Vohra, Tishani Doshi, Ranjit Hoskote, Rega Jha, Manjushree Thapa.

Write-along

A 70-minute writing session inspired by the month's essay. Ankita shares a prompt and we write. Less about producing polished work, more about practising the writing-thinking muscle. Happens every third saturday, 6PM IST.

Everything stays with you

At the end of each month, you'll receive the recording of the deep dive, any guest conversation from that month, the annotated essay PDF, and the write-along prompt—everything you need to revisit the month's exploration in your own time.

Upcoming Speakers

Sumana Roy (Aug)

Sumana Roy is the author of How I Became a Tree and Provincials: Postcards from the Peripheries, Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal, a work of literary criticism, Missing: A Novel, My Mother’s Lover and Other Stories, and two collections of poems: Out of Syllabus and VIP: Very Important Plant. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University, India. Her poems, essays and stories have been published in The Paris Review, Orion, Lit Hub, The Point, Granta, Guernica, Emergence Magazine, among other places.

Paromita Vohra (Oct)

Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker, writer and committed antakshari player whose extraordinary body of truth-telling, kinetic and intensely sensuous films, online videos, art installations and television programming, explore feminism, gender, desire, urban life and popular culture. She wrote a weekly newspaper column Paronormal Activity for 15 years. She is the director of several documentaries including Unlimited Girls, Morality TV and the Loving Jehad, and most recently Working Girls.

Tishani Doshi (Nov)

Tishani Doshi publishes poetry, fiction, and essays. Her fifth collection of poetry, Egrets, While War, explores the body, violence, and renewal in fractured times, and it has been longlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry 2026. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New York Review of Books, Granta, Aeon, The National, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, Corriere della Sera, and others.

Ranjit Hoskote (Dec)

Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, translator, cultural theorist and curator. He is the author of more than 35 books, including the poetry collections Vanishing Acts, Central Time, and Icelight; the translations I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded and The Homeland's an Ocean: Mir Taqi Mir; and To Break and To Branch, a book of essays on the painter-poet Gieve Patel. He was the curator of Kala Ghoda Literature Festival, Mumbai, from 2013 to 2017, and Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University in 2022.

Rega Jha (Jan)

Rega Jha’s body of work—spanning op-eds, longform reportage, memoir, and cultural criticism—examines popular sentiments: how emotions like pride, paranoia, desire, belonging, and anxiety are culturally generated, and how they’re mobilised in political, public life. She currently publishes weekly essays in the newsletter Here/Now Studies, and is working on her first book of essays. Over a decade-long media career, her writing has been published in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vogue, The Indian Express, Firstpost, Condé Nast Traveler, FiftyTwo, and Outlook among others.

Manjushree Thapa (Feb)

Manjushree Thapa is the author of eight books of literary fiction and nonfiction. She has also translated Nepali literature into English. Her nonfiction book Forget Kathmandu was a finalist in the Lettre Ulysses Award. She has won the Canada Council for the Arts' Joseph S Stauffer Prize in Literature and the Pen/HEIM Translation Fund, and numerous grants and writing residencies worldwide. Her essays have appeared in Granta, Globe and Mail, New York Times, Newsweek, and London Review of Books. 

Who is building Interior-Exterior?

Ankita Shah is an Indian-Nepali writer based in Bombay, India, whose poetry and essays are a curious exploration of what it means to be human. She publishes her work on Life, Annotated on Substack. Over the last year, she has been teaching the essay form through her workshops. Her writing has appeared in Anomaly, Soup Magazine, Firstpost, and Vogue. 

In 2013, she co-founded The Poetry Club, which fostered both a writing practice and an understanding of craft through monthly sessions, growing into a community of over 7,000 poets writing in English and Hindustani.

Interior-Exterior essay club is built from the same spirit and belief—to gather around a metaphorical fire with the willingness to feel something. 

Become a Member of the Interior-Exterior Essay Club

join Gift

Praise from the Interior-Exterior workshop community

Ankita’s essay writing workshop is easily one of the best things I have done for the reader and writer in me. I learnt what the purpose of essays are, how to generate essay ideas, how to read and analyze an essay, and how to write one. I loved discovering and reading through the pre-read essay collection across subjects and formats that Ankita painstakingly put together. I deeply enjoyed each of our classes–Ankita’s insights are incisive, thoughtful, and grounded in both the technical and emotional craft of writing. The entire experience was cathartic and if you want to spend three wholesome weekends, this is the place to be.

Shruti Khaitan

I’m not overstating it when I say this workshop opened portals for me. I see new rooms in my brain, new ways of looking at the world and my writing. I’m emboldened. I’m inspired. I can’t recommend it enough. Ankita is as gifted a teacher as she is a writer. Run, don’t walk.

A.R

The interior/exterior workshop was a highlight of my year! Ankita has created a tight balance of instruction, guidance, inspiration and connection. I learned a lot and wrote even more! Being guided through a process of structured editing and Ankita's sharp edits were especially valuable. I came away feeling touched by the shared intimacy the workshop fostered and nourished by the meaningful contact, generosity and care I experienced within the group. This workshop and my process of writing restored me at a time when I was struggling. I reconnected with myself and left feeling accomplished and emboldened to write and share more. Thank you!

Laura Wilson

This was one of the most valuable learning experiences I’ve had as a writer. The variety of structures in the well-chosen pre-readings opened my eyes to what else is possible with the form of an essay. Through the workshop, I gained a toolkit that has made me a lot more confident about not knowing where an essay will go, as opposed to having your message crafted before beginning your essay, which is what I’d been taught (and was glad to unlearn!). I enjoyed the communal touch of writing with other writers, exchanging feedback, and discussing the pre-reads with them—I sometimes appreciated the essays more after discussing them. I’m so excited about writing more essays and exploring the forms they could take!

Zainab Mirza

Ankita's essay writing workshop was a revelation - loved how she breaks down the technical aspects of writing while giving you plenty of examples to sink your baby writing teeth into.

Yooti

It takes a special kind of person to lead a workshop with such depth, generosity, rigor, and welcome that makes the writers and thinkers who show up every week engage to be their best and support each other’s The time spent each week transformed not only my writing, but how I take in the world around me and think. The focus of the course built a deep foundation for the way questions can be illuminated by structure, personal experiences, and supporting texts that broaden the conversation. I felt challenged, supported, and excited to keep going and growing after each session!

Kendall Kartaly

A couple months before the first workshop, my somatic therapist helped me identify a creative dead end that I have been hitting. This workshop effectively dismantled the block and turned it into a home of possibilities that I wanted to build all this time. I am still thinking about the whimsies and woes in the essays we learned from and shared with each other. I am thankful for the inquiries and revelations I was able to delve into with childlike curiosity. Being in that 10-year-old body again has been magical.

Fatima

I joined Ankita's workshop intuitively and I am so glad I did. It rekindled my love for writing. It made me feel excited about writing again. I loved the way the workshop was structured and how packed it was with valuable guiding gems throughout. I liked the safety of the container that our little cohort became. It felt so gratifying to read other people's vulnerable attempts and have mind read. I would definitely recommend the workshop to anyone who feels close to the written word and likes to express through it.

Sarah

Questions you might have

Do I need to be a writer to join?

No. This is for anyone curious about the world and willing to engage with the essay as a means to experience, examine, and understand it. Writing along is part of it, but it's practised here as a way of thinking and so, is really open to anyone. 

There’s no difference in the offering. You get all the same things either way. The monthly option offers the ease of paying in monthly installments, whereas the annual option, because you’re paying upfront, offers a 33% discount. Choose what works best for you!

Membership gives you access to everything released during your membership period. Your start date is the date you subscribe, and you'll receive all essays, notes, recordings, and other material released until your billing cycle ends. Material from before your membership period is not included.

Yes! Payments are accepted in multiple currencies, and you can pay using a range of methods.

You will be added to a mailing list where you will receive all the material to read, the invites to the sessions, and their subsequent recordings. We're also building a central home for the community on this website, and we'll keep you updated as it develops.

Close-reading session--every second saturday of the month, 6pm IST. Write-along session---every third saturday of the month, 6pm IST. Guest session timings depend on the guest writer's availability and will be announced a few weeks in advance.

Deep-dives and guest sessions are recorded (unless otherwise specified or requested by the guest writer), and you’ll receive the recordings after the session. You also receive annotated notes on the essay of the month and the prompt we wrote on. Rest assured, you’ll always have the material to read, write, engage with the chosen literature that month at your own pace.

Sometimes Ankita, sometimes the guest writer.

Never mandatory. A few minutes are set aside at the end of the write-along session for anyone who wants to read a line or two out loud, and this is completely voluntary.

No. If you would like Ankita to review your writing or guide your writing practice, you can sign up for a one-to-one consultation.

Yes, absolutely! While registering, just put in the details of the person you’re gifting it to, and they'll receive all membership emails and materials.

Yes. You can cancel your membership at any time, though we'd love to know what prompted your decision on the feedback form you’ll receive. You'll continue to receive all membership benefits until the end of your current billing cycle.

No—it's shared with you as a pdf or link, so you incur no separate cost. Ofcourse, beyond the assigned essay, Ankita and the guest writers will regularly share book and essay recommendations and we will try to provide you the links to access / purchase that 🙂

For any queries, email at ankitaashah2693@gmail.com