Kavita Bedford is an Australian-Indian writer, journalist, and researcher. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Guardian, Roads & Kingdoms, Griffith Review and elsewhere. She has an MA of Applied Anthropology from Macquarie University, and was a recent Churchill Fellow. She currently lives in Sydney where she works and teaches in media and global studies. She also teaches yoga.
"Bedford is a talented writer with a wonderful eye for detail, and her crisp, measured sentences are genuinely impressive. After grief, alienation and loneliness suffuse the novel, the story earns its way toward a sense of hope."--The New York Times Book Review "An intimate, epiphanic portrait of millennial city life."--The Guardian "Bedford beautifully portrays life of an Australian Indian writer struggling with grief a year after the death of her father [ . . . ] An insightful view of a city in flux."--Publishers Weekly "Bedford's writing is compelling, lyrical and often nostalgic. Her characters, diverse in background, live complex lives with all the nuances and intricacies that are shared among second-generation immigrants. It is a beautiful and tender ode to Sydney."--Kill Your Darlings "Bedford weaves a blanket of words that fans of complex literary fiction will fall into and savor."--Booklist "An unflinching novel that captures the isolation and emotional overload of modern life."--ForeWord Reviews "A tale of coexistence, kinship, and grief. Bedford's careful vignettes strike a skilled balance of refinement and depth. Exploring millennial life in a Redfern share house, Friends and Dark Shapes is a remarkable ethnographic fiction of what it means to be young, to live, and to have lost in Australia."--Judges' citation, Queensland Literary Awards (Shortlisted) "An intricately observed mosaic that comes together to represent a multi-faceted story of a Sydney that is forever evolving, in ways both positive and destructive."--InDaily Australia "Friends and Dark Shapes is a tender look at the myriad ways that a body can hold grief. Kavita Bedford writes lyrically and longingly, imbuing sweetness and darkness throughout. It was a genuine pleasure to read this book; I felt as though I were sitting with a close friend, whispering to each other, sharing close-kept secrets. It made me rethink how loneliness can manifest; how we sometimes hurt ourselves and each other. Friends and Dark Shapes is a real delight and Kavita Bedford is a true talent."--Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things "Incredibly well-written... a book for all the twenty or thirty-somethings grappling with city life and for all who were once in their shoes."--Literary Bread "Kavita Bedford's novel Friends and Dark Shapes explores the false promises and precarity of writing in the age of the gig economy."--The Nation "An achingly relatable, thought-provoking and compelling debut, full of gorgeous sentences that stopped me in my tracks."--Ewa Ramsey, author of The Morbids "Friends and Dark Shapes smells and feels and tastes like Sydney, like grief, like the limbo and the lucidity of your twenties. Bedford's poetic yet sparse, fearless yet gentle prose makes this a book to be savored."--Laura McPhee-Browne, author of Cherry Beach "Kavita Bedford gives the gift of brighter eyes. Her prose is sparse yet jeweled, a desert of out-of-the-blue opals and oases."--Vivian Pham, author of The Coconut Children "Such a vivid geography: this is a work of smart intensities, witty sorrow and wise coming-to-terms with grief. Astute, wry and beautifully tender."--Gail Jones, author of Five Bells
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