{"id":10935,"date":"2026-05-09T03:51:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T03:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/?p=10935"},"modified":"2026-05-09T03:37:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T03:37:31","slug":"thursday-evening-dinner-with-mahtab-narsimhan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/thursday-evening-dinner-with-mahtab-narsimhan\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday evening: dinner with Mahtab Narsimhan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Mahtab and I have been friends since the early 2000s when she joined my online critique group. I was over the moon when her first novel, The Third Eye, won the Silver Birch award in 2009! Since then, she&#8217;s never looked back, writing one fantastic novel after another. I hadn&#8217;t seen her in person for more than a decade because she moved to the west coast, so it was such a wonderful treat to celebrate Canadian Children&#8217;s Book Week not far from Mahtab&#8217;s home! She invited me to dinner on Thursday evening as I was traveling from Pemberton back to North Vancouver. She cooked up a feast and it was like no time had passed at all! I&#8217;m already missing her!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab1-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10934\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab1-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab1-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab1-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab1-1200x1200.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab1.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab2-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10933\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab2-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab2-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab2-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab2-1200x1200.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/mahtab2.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"723\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/third-723x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9872\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/third-723x1024.jpg 723w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/third-212x300.jpg 212w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/third-106x150.jpg 106w, https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/third.jpg 851w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Writing pysanky is deeply contemplative for me, and my heart told me to create a peacock design (good luck and hope) for Mahtab.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mahtab and I have been friends since the early 2000s when she joined my online critique group. I was over the moon when her first novel, The Third Eye, won the Silver Birch award in 2009! Since then, she&#8217;s never looked back, writing one fantastic novel after another. I hadn&#8217;t seen her in person for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/thursday-evening-dinner-with-mahtab-narsimhan\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Thursday evening: dinner with Mahtab Narsimhan&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1081,262],"tags":[1078,1068,1077],"class_list":["post-10935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bcbookweek","category-news-stories","tag-good-friends","tag-kidsbookweek","tag-mahtab-narsimhan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10936,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10935\/revisions\/10936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}