the times literature festival in delhi saw the whos who of the literary world come together for an exciting exchange of views and ideas over the weekend in one of the sessions titled authors unplugged the audience got a glimpse of three bestselling indian authors ashwin sanghi preeti shenoy and anand neelakantan in a noholdsbarred conversation with the festival director vinita dawra nangiaread alsowhy short story market has remained stunted in indiaindian parents want soft predigested dangerfree stories for their children and if there is an idea in it they dont like it said author jerry pinto while talking about why short fiction in the childrens section hasnt caught on at a session titled the power of a short storywhy multiple histories are needed for cyclical view of stories timeauthors anand neelakantan and ashwin sanghi while agreeing on the overlap between history and mythology at the times litfest 2023 had a word of advice for the audience keep on your discerning lenssubcontinent yet to learn partition lessonsnone of the countries in the indian subcontinent are at peace today and lessons from the partition are yet to be learned author and historian aanchal malhotra said at the times litfestwhat followed next were candid discussions with the authors wherein they spoke about their writing and research processes the future that artificial intelligence ai holds for writing and on their own idiosyncrasies as authors the interesting panel discussion between the authors and nangia seemed more like a playful banter between friends and held the audience spellboundthe write india connectthe authors sitting with me on stage are some of the countrys highestselling popular authors they have several bestsellers to their name they all write in the field of commercial fiction so these are the things that connect them but the biggest connection for me and for the times of india is write india they were all authors for write india which is the worlds largest crowd sourced short story contest which we started for the first season we had ashwin sanghi and preeti shenoy as our mentorauthors and for the second season we had anand neelakantan they have been instrumental in encouraging hundreds and thousands of people across india to write short stories which have come to us and we have selected the best of the lot and we have selected winners amongst them those winners today have gone on to become published authors and some of them are here at times litfest to represent their books vinita dawra nangia saidwriter vs storytellerstarting the discussion with ashwin sanghi vinita pointed out that he had earlier said he is more of a storyteller rather than a writer so whats the difference to this ashwin who is bestknown for his famous bharat series replied as a writer i am very concerned about weaving a tapestry of words whereas as a storyteller you can either tell a great story or you cant the most difficult job of a storyteller is to get the reader to