What is Novel Niche?

In 2010, I started a book blog to share my thoughts with anyone I could about the books I was reading. Armed with barely rudimentary (aka zero) wordpress skills, enthusiasm and a desire to connect, I focused on book reviews at first, slowly expanding to include diary-like transmissions to my growing community of fellow bloggers and bookworms. Twelve years later, Novel Niche is still going strong!

Novel Niche’s currently focus is on Queer & Transgressive Close Readings from the Ungovernable & Dangerous Margins.

What’s this space for?

My Substack is in part an extension of the main Novel Niche site, but I encourage you to also think about it as a series of little subversive letters to you. I’ll be using this space to post updates about my book in progress, as well as notes towards a poet’s dangerous inclinations, recipes for mischief, curious arcane substances, writing advice, and more. I’ll periodically offer subscriber-exclusive writing workshops, feedback sessions, and the like, all through this platform.

I’m deeply delighted you’re here.

Who am I?

I’m Shivanee Ramlochan, a Trinidadian writer. In 2017, I published my debut collection of poems, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting, which was shortlisted for a 2018 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Currently, my second and third books are deciding who they need to be.

Politics? Don’t Mind If I Do

This will always be a space that believes Black Lives Matter, that affirms the rights of all LGBTQI+ people, that values consent in every regard, that advocates for affordable global access to abortions, living sustainable wages for sex workers, and bodies existing in their power at all imaginable permutations.

Transmisogyny is not spoken here.