SALA Bookshop: Writings from South Asia and the Diaspora
The South Asian Literature and Art (SALA) festival is presenting its 6th edition Global Gaze, South Asian Soul on September 26-27 at Menlo College in Menlo Park, CA. SALA Bookshop, a new initiative, launched in early September and hosts books by authors featured at the upcoming festival. The festival, and the Bookshop, feature contemporary stories across genres that spotlight the literature and arts from South Asia and its diaspora. SALA Bookshop is a subsidiary of ArtForumSF, the founding organization for SALA.
Executive Director Ambika Sahay, Bookshop team members Bharti Aggarwal, Premojwala Ramakrishnan, and Sadaf Siddique, as well as SALA advisory board member Reshma Nigam discussed the genesis of SALA Bookshop with Indica News. SALA organizers learned in conversations with authors featured at previous SALA festivals that the consignment model adopted by some booksellers may suit larger publishers, but is challenging for authors with smaller presses, and for authors publishing independently. Launched to support all authors, SALA Bookshop will focus exclusively on authors featured in the festival in its first year of operating independently, and as time goes on, will explore a potentially broader role in the ecosystem of writing, reviewing, publishing and selling.
The Bookshop team has worked through the process of setting up an online bookstore, starting with Ambika Sahay obtaining a seller's license, and building the team to handle all aspects from procurement to website development while navigating challenges of working with publishers and managing inventory. This includes coordinating book shipments from various geographies including India, and on occasion having to purchase books directly from Amazon when publishers weren't actively selling in the US market.
Team members come with experience in starting and running businesses and online platforms. Ramakrishnan founded the peacock avenue that makes Indian-inspired curated gift boxes, and supplied SALA with gift boxes for speakers and panelists for a couple of years. Aggarwal worked as a software engineer and marketing professional in various Silicon Valley companies for 20 years, and volunteered for the SALA festival a year ago. Siddique, a writer herself, used to run her own bookstore called KitaabWorld which focused on South Asian children’s literature.
Aggarwal and Siddique manage the website development, and Ramakrishnan works on procurement. Aggarwal spoke of layering in content such as book synopses, reviews or readers’ comments on each book so those browsing could have an enhanced experience.
True to the Silicon Valley spirit, the SALA Bookshop team views their growing pains and any challenges as that of any startup. Their vision for the future includes showcasing books by SALA authors outside the festival cycle, and broadening their offering to all books by South Asian authors.
This article was published in indica News on Sept 21, 2026
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