Scaachi Koul

Last updated

Scaachi Koul
Scaachi Koul at In Conversation at Indigo Chapters - 2017 - IMG 2959.jpg
Koul at a book reading in Toronto in 2017
Born
Scaachi Koul

(1991-02-07)February 7, 1991
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Nationality Canadian
Citizenship Canadian
Alma mater Ryerson University
OccupationWriter

Scaachi Koul (born 1991) is a former Canadian culture writer at BuzzFeed Canada. [1] [2] She is the author of the book of essays One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter and was one of the reporters in BuzzFeed's Netflix documentary series Follow This . Before BuzzFeed, Koul worked at Penguin Random House Canada, the acquiring publisher of her book. [3] Her journalism has appeared in Flare, [4] HuffPost Canada, The Thought Catalog, The Guardian, The New Yorker, [5] The New York Times, [6] The Globe and Mail, [7] and other publications.

Contents

Career

Koul freelanced while still at the Ryerson School of Journalism where she wrote for Maclean's from 2009 up until her graduation at the end of 2012. [8] [9] She was fired from her first job at Maclean's magazine. From April to November 2014 Koul wrote the "Unf*ck Yourself" column for Hazlitt . [10] In 2015 her column was rebranded "Scaach-22" with the new tagline "managing your own privilege without being a dick". [11]

In March 2015, while Koul was still employed by Penguin Random House Canada, they announced publication of a collection of her essays. [3] Originally the collection was titled The Pursuit of Misery [12] then it was changed to One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter. [13] The book covers subjects including family, race, feminism, body image, and rape culture from her perspective as an Indian-Canadian woman growing up in the suburbs of Calgary. [14] She also discusses her writing career and social media, including temporarily deactivating her Twitter account as a result of invective and threats following a request for long-form submissions from people who were not white men. [15] Koul was praised for her wit and humour, [16] ability to mix sarcasm and sentimentality, [17] and for her effective use of confessional writing as a complement to analytical rigour. [18] She received a shortlisted nomination for the 2018 Stephen Leacock Award for the best book of humour written in English by a Canadian writer. [19]

She hosts the Scamfluencers podcast with Sarah Hagi, which covers scammers who are influencers. [20]

Personal life

Koul was born to Indian parents and raised in Calgary, Alberta. [1] She was a member of the Girl Guides of Canada and participated in their youth programs. [21] She currently lives in New York [22] with her cat, Sylvia Plath. [23] She was formerly married.

Koul is an Indo-Canadian of Kashmiri descent, and her writing on race and shadism draws from her own life. [7] [24] Of her ethnicity, she has stated although she is considered a brown person, her fairer skin has given her a privilege and when she goes to India she is "basically acting as a white person." [25] [26]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Hazlitt</span> 19th-century English essayist and critic

William Hazlitt was an English essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. He is also acknowledged as the finest art critic of his age. Despite his high standing among historians of literature and art, his work is currently little read and mostly out of print.

The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, also known as the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour or just the Leacock Medal, is an annual Canadian literary award presented for the best book of humour written in English by a Canadian writer, published or self-published in the previous year. The silver medal, designed by sculptor Emanuel Hahn, is a tribute to well-known Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) and is accompanied by a cash prize of $25,000 (CAD). It is presented in the late spring or early summer each year, during a banquet ceremony in or near Leacock’s hometown of Orillia, Ontario.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Munro</span> Canadian short story writer (1931–2024)

Alice Ann Munro was a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Her work is said to have revolutionized the architecture of the short story, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time, and with integrated short fiction cycles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eden Robinson</span> Indigenous Canadian author

Eden Victoria Lena Robinson is an Indigenous Canadian author. She is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations in British Columbia, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hilda Kay Grant</span> Canadian writer and artist (1910–1996)

Hilda Kay Grant was a Canadian writer and artist, who published both non-fiction work under her own name and novels under the pen name Jan Hilliard.

<i>Flare</i> (magazine) Canadian fashion magazine

Flare was a Canadian online fashion magazine in print until 2016. Owned by St. Joseph Communications, it was an online brand until 2021 and was folded into Fashion magazine in early 2023.

Doubleday Canada is an imprint of the publishing company Penguin Random House Canada. The company used to be known as Forboys. It was incorporated in 1936, and since 1945 it has been known as Doubleday Canada Limited. In 1986 parent company Doubleday was acquired by Bertelsmann. Due to Canadian policy at the time, majority control of Doubleday Canada was sold to Anna Porter. Porter sold her shares to Winnipeg businessman Abraham Simkin in 1991. Random House of Canada, which has just been acquired by Bertelsmann, acquired Doubleday Canada in 1999. In 2013, Random House of Canada and Penguin Canada merged to form Penguin Random House Canada.

Laurie Gelman is a Canadian television personality and writer, originally from Ottawa, Ontario. In 2007 she worked on two Canadian-based talk shows, The Mom Show and Doctor in the House.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jillian Harris</span> Canadian television personality

Jillian Harris is a Canadian television personality. She is best known for appearing on the television series The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and Love It or List It Vancouver. She has also appeared on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Canada's Handyman Challenge, and The Bachelorette Canada.

BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Kenneth Lerer, co-founder and chairman of The Huffington Post, started as a co-founder and investor in BuzzFeed and is now the executive chairman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elaine Lui</span> Canadian journalist

Elaine "Lainey" Lui is a Canadian television personality and reporter. She pens a website, LaineyGossip, is an anchor on CTV's etalk, and is also a co-host on CTV's daily talk series The Social.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennine Capó Crucet</span> American novelist

Jennine Capó Crucet is an American novelist, and short story writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanif Abdurraqib</span> American poet and essayist

Hanif Abdurraqib is an American poet, essayist, and cultural critic. His first essay collection, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was published in 2017. His 2021 essay collection A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance received the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Abdurraqib was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kimberly Drew</span> American art curator, writer, activist

Kimberly Drew is an American art influencer and writer. She is best known as the former social media manager for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and her use of the social media handle MuseumMammy. Drew released her first book, This Is What I Know About Art in June 2020, as part of a children series from Penguin, and published an anthology titled Black Futures with New York Times staff writer Jenna Wortham in December 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauren Duca</span> American journalist

Lauren Duca is an American former journalist and political columnist. She formerly worked at Teen Vogue, where she had a column from 2017 to 2018 called "Thigh High Politics". Her book How to Start a Revolution (2019) is on young people and the future of American politics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Weinman</span> American journalist and crime fiction author

Sarah Weinman is a journalist, editor, and crime fiction authority. She has most recently written The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World about the kidnapping and captivity of 11-year-old Florence Sally Horner by a serial child molester, a crime believed to have inspired Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. The book received mostly positive reviews from NPR, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe.

Gwen Benaway is Canadian poet and activist. As of October 2019, She was a PhD candidate in the Women & Gender Studies Institute at the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto. Benaway has also written non-fiction for The Globe and Mail and Maclean's.

Anne Helen Petersen is an American writer and journalist. She worked as a Senior Culture Writer for BuzzFeed until August 2020, when she began writing full-time for her newsletter "Culture Study" on Substack. Petersen has also been published in the opinion section of The New York Times.

Alicia Elliott is a Tuscarora writer and editor.

<i>Im Glad My Mom Died</i> 2022 memoir by Jennette McCurdy

I'm Glad My Mom Died is a 2022 memoir by American writer, director and former actress Jennette McCurdy based on her one-woman show of the same name. The book is about her career as a child actress and her difficult relationship with her abusive mother who died in 2013. This is McCurdy's first book and was published on August 9, 2022, by Simon & Schuster.

References

  1. 1 2 "Scaachi Koul Biography". penguinrandomhouse.ca. Penguin Random House Canada. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  2. ↑ "Scaachi Koul". Buzzfeed.com. BuzzFeed Canada. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  3. 1 2 Robertson, Becky (March 12, 2014). "Doubleday Canada acquires essay collection by Scaachi Koul". quillandquire.com/. St. Joseph Media. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  4. ↑ Koul, Scaachi. "Scaachi Koul on the Reality of Dating a Much Older Guy". flare.com. Archived from the original on February 8, 2017. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  5. ↑ "Contributors: Scaachi Koul". The New Yorker. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  6. ↑ Koul, Scaachi (February 6, 2017). "Meanwhile in Canada … Things Are Just as Bad". The New York Times. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  7. 1 2 Koul, Scaachi (May 6, 2016). "Review: Kamal Al-Solaylee's Brown is essential reading for understanding the non-white world". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  8. ↑ "Contributors: Scaachi Koul". Maclean's. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  9. ↑ Hansen, Leah. "Scaachi Koul". Ryerson School of Journalism. Grads at Work. Archived from the original on May 23, 2017. Retrieved March 30, 2019.
  10. ↑ Koul, Scaachi. "Unf*ck Yourself". Hazlitt. Penguin Random House Canada. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  11. ↑ Koul, Scaachi. "Scaach-22". Hazlitt. Penguin Random House Canada. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  12. ↑ "Author Scaachi Koul". Hazlitt Magazine. Penguin Random House Canada. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  13. ↑ "Scaachi Koul | Authors | Macmillan". US Macmillan. Retrieved April 3, 2018.
  14. ↑ Donahue, Anne. "12 Days of Feminists: Anne T. Donahue on Fierce Truth-Teller Scaachi Koul". Flare. Archived from the original on March 30, 2019. Retrieved March 30, 2019.
  15. ↑ Ansari, Sadiya (March 9, 2017). "Scaachi Koul on Race, Anxiety and Her Brand-New Book". Flare. Archived from the original on March 30, 2019. Retrieved March 30, 2019.
  16. ↑ Volmers, Eric (March 18, 2017). "Calgary's Scaachi Koul tackles Twitter trolls, Indian weddings and body hair in new collection of essays". Calgary Herald . Retrieved March 30, 2019.
  17. ↑ Arnone, Ted (March 13, 2017). "Jagged utter pill: Scaachi Koul turns social media rage and mockery into an enthralling essay collection". The National Post . Retrieved March 30, 2019.
  18. ↑ Rosenberg, Alyssa (May 2, 2017). "In Scaachi Koul's debut essay collection, life is ridiculous–and deadly serious". The Washington Post . Retrieved March 30, 2019.
  19. ↑ "Scaachi Koul, Laurie Gelman and Jennifer Craig shortlisted for 2018 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour". CBC Books, May 2, 2018.
  20. ↑ "Scamfluencers (Podcast Series 2022– )". IMDb. April 11, 2022. Retrieved December 19, 2022.
  21. ↑ "Diamond Isinger on Instagram: "Created my own Girl Guide role-model edition of "Guess Who?" for @girlguidesofcanada girls to play, featuring lots of accomplished 🇨🇦 women…"". Instagram. Archived from the original on December 25, 2021. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
  22. ↑ Scaachi Koul [@Scaachi] (March 19, 2019). "i live in new york now sorry to disappoint" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  23. ↑ Koul, Scaachi (2017). One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays. Doubleday Canada. ISBN   9780385685368.
  24. ↑ Koul, Scaachi (November 2, 2015). "I Was on a CBC Panel and the Internet Wanted To Guess My Race". buzzfeed.com. Buzzfeed Canada. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  25. ↑ Catherine Whelan (May 4, 2017). "White privilege in brown Canada". Public Radio International.
  26. ↑ "Scaachi Koul's One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, reviewed: Honest and humorous" . Retrieved October 14, 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.