She had never really loved her husband. What she had felt for him was a kind of respectful devotion, the kind her mother had held for her father.

Me, too, has a strong-armed will,

a mean swing

for bats and balls, a

wild, mean, streak for elbowing.

Prince Trailokya stopped at a bend halfway up Shivapuri, exhausted. He’d left his horse outside Budhanilkantha temple almost two ghadis ago and had climbed continuously, determined to make it to the top.

The third edition of La.Lit’s Writing Nepal short story contest, judged by US-based Nepali writer Samrat Upadhyay, has been won by Dipesh Risal with his short story ‘The Almost Enlightenment of Prince Trailokya’.

For the family of eight walking in front of us, though, it’s a moment of raucous joy. First, a young child, about eight years old, attempts to kick out at the Tahr. The animal seems unfamiliar with this gesture, and quickens its pace.

A few days ago, judge Samrat Upadhyay sent us the shortlist for the third edition of La.Lit’s short story competition, Writing Nepal. So here it is, in no particular order except the alphabetical, the 6 shortlisted entries!

The literary canon of a nation as multilingual as Nepal ought not to consist overwhelmingly of Nepali-language literature, but it does. It ought to include a vast body of literature in national languages other than Nepali, but it doesn’t.

Midnight pools catch the brilliant lanterns

carried by women in procession.

Deep into sleep

I follow them home.

With the untimely demise of Dr Dina Bangdel on July 25, 2017 the world lost an outstanding art historian specialising in traditional Himalayan and modern and contemporary South Asian art.