In her email signature she included three links, the first leading to books on Goodreads and the second to a Bengali collection of stories intriguingly titled Whispers of Fireflies. The third link carried me to Galpopath.com, the Bengali publication where my fictional Tolstoy interview now resides.
Interested in learning more, I Googled and found her painfully beautiful story A Shoreless Abyss, which left me breathless.
Nahar Trina is a bilingual writer, literary translator, and book artist whose work bridges Bengali and English, memory and migration. Born in Bangladesh and now based in the U.S., she has authored seven books in Bengali and recently published her English-language debut, Fleeting Impressions, a flash fiction collection exploring grief, belonging, and the quiet power of language. Her work has appeared in both print and digital platforms, including international literary magazines.
On Beginnings and Early Influences
EN: Born in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and starting your writing journey around 2008 through community blogs and forums, what initially drew you to writing? Were there particular books, writers, or life experiences in Bangladesh that shaped your voice early on?
Nahar Trina: The chapter of my writing that began on community blogs and forums actually traces its roots back to my childhood and school days. Along with writing for school wall magazines and annual periodicals, I regularly participated in yearly essay competitions. My initiation into the world of writing was fueled by the immense encouragement of my parents and my elder sister. My family always inspired us to pursue extracurricular activities alongside our school studies. Among my siblings, some excelled in dance, some in music, and others in recitation. While dance and music were not my cup of tea, I did a lot of poetry recitation during my school years, and I wasn't too bad at it. The rewards for these achievements came in the form of books. Moreover, as we excelled academically, a steady stream of books entered our house as prizes. My siblings and I received so many books that we had a dedicated bookshelf just for them.
My parents played a monumental role in fostering this love for reading. My father, in particular, had an extraordinary passion for books. He spent a significant amount of time in Europe for his teaching profession. When returning to Bangladesh, instead of bringing back materialistic luxuries, he would bring heaps of rare books. I share a very fond memory from my childhood: when my father returned home after completing his PhD, two trucks loaded with goods arrived in front of our house a few days later. Many curious neighbors gathered at our doorstep to see what my father had brought in such massive quantities. To their utter amazement, what unloaded from the trucks were mountains of books! And it wasn’t just literature on hydrology, the subject of his research; there were rare gems of world literature.
Our most valuable asset was a house filled with books. Thinking about the authors of those books filled me with a sense of profound wonder. It struck me how books could be infinitely more valuable than any luxury item, and I used to think that the people who wrote them must belong to some ethereal, mystical world. Perhaps it was the magnetic pull of that very world that eventually drew me into the realm of writing. Thus, it wasn’t a single event, a specific book, or a lone author that shaped me; rather, it was the entire familial environment, the abundance of books, and countless authors who subtly influenced me behind the scenes. And when it comes to my emergence as a writer and the publication of my books, the person whose encouragement has been the greatest is my brother, Dr. Moniruzzaman.
On Migration and Diasporic Experience
EN: You’ve lived between Bangladesh and the United States. What are the primary themes that run through your work? How has your own experience of moving to the U.S. and building a life in Illinois changed or deepened your writing?
Nahar Trina: The deeper a tree's roots penetrate the soil, the stronger its bond with the earth becomes. Human beings are much like trees; the land where one is born, and where childhood and adolescence unfold, establishes a profound connection with the soul. I moved to the United States in my youth, having already spent a significant portion of my formative years in Bangladesh. Had I come here as a young child, perhaps the homeland I left behind would not constantly envelop me the way it does now. In my thoughts, my birthplace naturally surfaces, with or without reason, and its imprint is inevitably left upon my writing. This is an invisible pull of a thread that seems to reside, more or less, within almost all diaspora writers. If I may be so bold—as they are revered literary figures, and mentioning them as an obscure, emerging writer might seem audacious—I would like to look at Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, or Jhumpa Lahiri. They are all diasporic writers, even though their specific experiences and positions differ. Yet, if you notice, their native lands frequently peek through their work. The execution may vary, but the signs of cultural duality are clear. No matter where we settle after moving away from our roots, that primal pull remains, whether loudly or in whispers. My own writing bears that distinct mark.
That being said, it is not as though living in the United States has left no impression on my work. It certainly has. If the absolute prerequisites for writing are freedom of expression and peace, the United States offers them to me in full measure. Here, I have the liberty to write candidly whatever I wish to write. In my homeland, that was often not possible. Especially with the kind of writing I do lately, various obstacles, ideological constraints, and taboos might have turned into barriers. Here, I can write without having to worry about those constraints, which creates a peaceful environment—and as everyone knows, 'peace' is a vital component for a writer. This flow of free speech and peace helps me immerse myself in my work.
Back home, even when I could write something in my own way, the chances of seeing it published were often uncertain. Various ideological sensitivities and institutional hesitations sometimes made publication more difficult than writing itself. Here, in the United States, the freedom to write is accompanied by the freedom to publish—and that combination has had a profound impact on my creative life.
At the same time, the experience of living in this country and interacting with the locals teaches me to focus deeply on the subtleties and psychological depth of my writing.
On Bilingual Writing and Translation
EN: As a bilingual writer who works in both Bengali and English, and as a literary translator (including your translation of Toni Morrison’s Sula), how do you navigate the two languages? Are there things you can express more easily in Bengali than in English, or vice versa, and what has translation taught you about your own creative process?
Nahar Trina: There are many bilingual writers in the world who are immensely successful. My journey as a bilingual writer, however, is relatively recent. Most of my previous writing in English was confined to the pages of my personal diaries. Personally, I like to think that if the Bengali language is my maternal home, English is like my in-laws' home. Both homes are dear to me, and both are essential. Therefore, my movement between Bengali and English is not a conscious effort to maintain a balance; rather, you could call it an attempt to capture the natural rhythm of my current life through my writing.
I think, feel, and write in both languages. It is as if the two languages open different doors within me. Bengali offers me the warmth of a mother’s womb, memories, and the raw scent of the soil and its people. On the other hand, English extends its hand as a bridge to close the gap of distance, providing analysis, structure, and sometimes, a necessary detachment. Which emotion flows more easily into which language depends entirely on the very nature of that feeling.
There are certain things that feel incomplete if not expressed in Bengali—such as the bond with one's mother and motherland, the village, childhood, deep wounds, and nostalgia. In these realms, Bengali feels much more tangible and visceral to me. Conversely, certain thoughts, especially abstract ideas, philosophical musings, or the subtle layers of complex emotions, sometimes attain a sharper clarity in English. Both languages grant me distinct depths, and I continue my pursuit of writing within these two dimensions.
More than anything, translation has taught me humility in my creative process. While translating a novel like Toni Morrison’s ‘Sula’, I realized that language is not merely a collection of words; it is history, the repository of a community's culture and lifestyle, their pain, their shadows, their silence, and occasionally, their resistance. Re-creating a sentence in another language makes you realize that to carry the original author's voice, you must step back and quiet your own voice as a translator. This experience helps me become more cautious, attentive, and restrained in my own original writing.
Translation has shown me that every language possesses its own inherent ethics, and writing has taught me that standing between two languages means carrying the light of two different worlds simultaneously. Furthermore, when my original writing faces a creative drought, translation serves as a vital exit route, keeping my momentum alive. This is precisely why I rarely have to grapple with the dreaded ‘writer's block.’
TO BE CONTINUED
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