

KAVITA BEDFORD
I am an Australian-Indian
writer and teacher based in Sydney.
My novel, Friends & Dark Shapes,
is out NOW in USA, AUSTRALIA & ITALY.
"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
ABOUT
I am an Australian-Indian writer with a background in media, anthropology and literature. I have worked and taught in media and writing for the past decade. I am passionate about telling stories from new perspectives that are traditionally left out of mainstream literature and media. My first novel, Friends & Dark Shapes, was published in 2021 by Europa Editions (US), Text Publishing (AUS) and Edizioni E/O (Italy) and was Shortlisted for the Queensland, the NSW Premiers’ Literary Awards and the Small Press Network’s Book of the Year.
My central themes of work have focused on migration, globalisation, conflict, the body, female identity and voice. I have worked on a range of media and creative projects and taught across universities and organisations and privately with individuals.
I was the 2021 Writer in Residence at The Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University. I worked as the former Editor of The Point Magazine for Multicultural NSW, a publication exploring narratives of countering violent extremism and I was the creative producer of a digital media project exploring diverse, untold stories from South-West Sydney. I was a Churchill Fellow and looked at migrant narratives between Australia and Europe. My writing has appeared in a range of publications including Guernica, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, and the Griffith Review.
I am trained in Hatha style yoga, focusing on alignment and embodied flow. I run specialised workshops for organisations looking to create healing-informed spaces and for people working in creative practices to find a way to connect to their own bodies, stories and creativity.
I am represented by Mary Krienke at Sterling Lord Literistic Agency, New York, USA.
Photo credit: Christopher Woe

FRIENDS & DARK SHAPES
Shortlisted for the Queensland's Literary Awards, New South Premier’s New Fiction Awards and Small Press Network Book of the Year Award, 2022.
A group of housemates in Sydney’s inner city contend with gentrification, divisive politics, stalled careers, their own complicated privilege as second-generation Australians, and the evolving world of dating in this moving, funny, and stylish debut novel.
Wry, relatable, lyrical, and beautifully told, a book about politics, desire, youth, relationships and friends, Friends and Dark Shapes introduces a bold new Australian voice.




REVIEWS FOR FRIENDS & DARK SHAPES
"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
“An intimate, epiphanic portrait of millennial city life...Bedford, filtering her Didionesque prose (and her protagonist’s Didionesque generational cataloguing) through a wider emotional lens, excels at.
Like Helen Garner and Christos Tsiolkas’ own debuts, Bedford’s is more concerned with taking the pulse of young, artistically-minded people alive and struggling through the city’s struggle, slipping and sinking through the every-nothing days of urban anomie and insecure work and relationships”
—The Guardian
“Bedford writes extraordinarily moving sentences and it's exciting to see this level of talent in a first novel”
—The Australian
“Astonishingly assured and full of razor sharp observations about what it means to live precariously in a changing city. It’s hard to believe this is Bedford’s first novel.”
—Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather
Interviews/Reviews
ABC Radio National: The Book Show (0:33:00)
ABC Radio Sydney: Drive (0:05:50)
2SER: Book Club podcast
2SER: Final Draft podcast
3CR: Published or Not
3RRR: Backstory (0:19:00)
ABC Radio National: The Bookshelf
Anonymous Was a Woman podcast
Booktopia podcast
Cass Moriarty
Guardian
Guardian (op-ed)
Guernica: The Daintree (fiction)
InDaily
James and Ashley Stay At Home podcast (0:02:40)
Kill Your Darlings
Largehearted Boy Playlist for Friends & Dark Shapes
LitHub: Redefining the Modern Flâneuse: A Reading List (op-ed)
Melbourne Writers Festival blog
Nation
New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Readings
Saturday Paper: How To Wait (short fiction)
SBS
Star Tribune
Sydney Morning Herald
SELECTED WRITING
SHORT stories
GuERNICA, The WOLF
GUERNICA, THe daintree
the saturday paper, how to wait
ISLAND MAGAZINE, Riverine
NEW AUSTRALIAN FICTION 2022 KYD
GOing down swinging, mardi gras
Going down swinging, the meditations
griffith review, the spectator
ARTICLES
The Guardian, A love letter to sydney
lit hub, Redefining the Modern Flâneuse: A Reading List
ABC arts, Australian storytellers share favourite shows, books and films that are breaking new ground in terms of representation
the Guardian, The Modi Express: a modern spectacle, and an attempt to leave the leader's dark past behind
The Guardian, To prevent homegrown Islamist radicalism, drop the media hysteria
Roads & Kingdoms, Detained in Suburbia
Griffith Review, Smiling Faces of Integration
PROJECTS
My major themes of exploration dwell on place—drawing on how the organization of space and architecture are connected with the politics and lived experience of place and urban experience—and the perspective of the ‘outsider’ and migrant voices in literature.

MAPPING FRICTIONS: STORIES FROM WESTERN SYDNEY
Creative Producer for a storytelling project dedicated to celebrating stories from Western Sydney. These are people with diverse stories to tell. Despite this, sensationalist tales have dominated the media headlines have been of high crime rates, violence, and religious extremism.
Photo credit: George Voulgaropuolos
CONTACT
Thank you for visiting my site.
For general author enquiries please email my agent Mary Krienke at Sterling Lord Literistic: mary[at]sll.com
For all other enquiries and if you want to work together please email me at: kavvybedford[at]gmail.com