Elizabeth Chakrabarty
The Indigo Press is an independent publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction, based in London. Guided by a spirit of internationalism, feminism and social justice, we publish books to make readers see the world afresh, question their behaviour and beliefs, and imagine a better future.

Elizabeth Chakrabarty
Elizabeth Chakrabarty is an interdisciplinary writer who uses creative and critical writing, besides performance, to explore themes of race, gender and sexuality. Her debut novel Lessons in Love and Other Crimes, inspired by experience of race hate crime, was published in 2021 by The Indigo Press, along with her essay ‘On Closure and Crime’.
Elizabeth was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022 for Lessons in Love and Other Crimes. In 2022 she was also shortlisted for the Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction, and her story will be published in an e-anthology by Comma Press. She was shortlisted for the Asian Writer Short Story Prize in 2016, and her story ‘Eurovision’ was published in Dividing Lines (Dahlia Publishing, 2017). Her poetry has been published by Visual Verse and her short creative-critical work includes writing published in Glänta, Gal-Dem and New Writing Dundee, and more recently in Wasafiri and the anthology Imagined Spaces (Saraband, 2020). She received an Authors’ Foundation Grant from The Society of Authors (UK) in December 2018 to support the writing of Lessons in Love and Other Crimes, and was chosen as one of the runners up for the inaugural CrimeFest bursary for crime fiction authors of colour in 2022. She lives in London
Lessons In Love and Other Crimes
Tesya has reasons to feel hopeful after leaving her last job, where she was subjected to a series of anonymous hate crimes. Now she is back home in London to start a new lecturing position, and has begun an exciting, if tumultuous, love affair with the enigmatic Holly. But this idyllic new start quickly sours.
Tesya finds herself victimized again at work by an unknown assailant, who subjects her to an insidious, sustained race hate crime. As her paranoia mounts, Tesya finds herself yearning for the most elemental desires: love, acceptance, and sanctuary. Her assailant, meanwhile, is recording his manifesto, and plotting his next steps.
Inspired by the author’s personal experiences of hate crime and bookended with essays which contextualise the story within a lifetime of microaggressions, Lessons in Love and Other Crimes is a heart-breaking, hopeful, and compulsively readable novel about the most quotidian of crimes.
On Closure & Crime
‘Twice in my life, when I’ve least expected it – relaxed in a bar with acquaintances, a glass of wine in my hand – someone has asked me this question: “When did you realize you’re not white?”’
Read Elizabeth Chakrabarty’s exclusive essay On Closure and Crime, written to support the publication of her novel Lessons in Love and Other Crimes.
Elizabeth’s recommended reading list
Check out Elizabeth’s list of books that inspired her book Lessons in Love and Other Crimes, from Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses, to Sigmund Freud’s Writings On Art and Literature.





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