Letters off the wall: Exploring Varsha Seshan’s novel and career

For many, receiving a letter can be just as exciting as writing one. In Varsha Seshan’s ‘The Wall Friends Club’, a small crack in the wall holds letters that help two girls find friends in each other. The book features a tale of two (perhaps more?) 10-year-olds who develop a friendship through letters sneakily placed inside the crevice of a wall.

Told entirely in the form of letters, the book recently bagged the Jury Award under the Children’s Category at the Crossword Book Awards 2025. We speak to Varsha Seshan, the author of the book. The Pune-based author describes herself as someone who loves rain, silence, and the possibility of magic. Here are excerpts from the interview:

Varsha Seshan with the Crossword Book Award 2025.
| Photo Credit:
PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

‘The Wall Friends Club’ was your first book of 2025. While writing it, did you think the book would become popular and appreciated the way it is now?

Not at all. I would not have thought of this as a conventionally award-winning book because in some places, it’s quite silly because it features children who sometimes do silly things.

Can you talk to me about your connection with letter-writing and the vision that went behind the writing of this book?

There are two things that contributed to my writing this book in the form of an epistolary novel. First is that I am a big letter-writer. I think it started because my father used to write letters. It’s really exciting to receive a letter in the mail and it’s something that stays with me even today, if it’s not spam or junk. And the other factor is that I love books written in the form of letters like ‘Daddy-Long-Legs’. It is a form that I wanted to play with, as a writer.

Varsha Seshan
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

You have also written two verse-novels. ‘Fantasy in verse is quite an ambitious project’. Can you elaborate on this quote of yours?

Verse novels typically tend to be succinct. These can pack a lot of emotions into very little, in terms of words. The big challenge in fantasy is ‘world-building’. World-building requires you to explain ideas without it being an info-dump. You need people to have a sense that the world that you are creating is real and the way to do that is typically through descriptions. So when it comes to verse, you don’t have so many words and I can’t have a description coming in because I have no paragraphs. That is why the idea that people will get sucked into this world even if I don’t have the kind of elaborate descriptions that fantasy usually has, was ambitious.

What is one challenge you faced while writing an epistolary novel like ‘The Wall Friends Club’, in terms of form?

I had to find a reasonable premise because children don’t write anymore to one another the way I did as a child. A related challenge is setting the story. Very often children find themselves interacting with people of the same socio-economic circle so everyone often knows everybody else. Why would they write a letter? So setting the whole thing up was the biggest challenge.

Talk to me about Denise Antao, the illustrator for this book.

I love her illustrations. More than anything, I really liked her doodle. In the publishing world, writers and illustrators don’t really communicate directly, they always communicate through the editor because ultimately the illustrator is a creator and if I want to impose my creative vision on her, it’s unfair. Also I met Denise for the first time at the Crossword Book Awards, I have not met her before.

As a writer catering to children, how do you get the pulse of kids these days?

I work with kids all the time. I run book clubs, writing programmes. I see what they write, how they write and they shape me as a writer. At literature festivals you tend to have a more mixed crowd, not necessarily children who go to elite schools or with a particular paying power; so I interact with a wide range of kids.

Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Yes, I have always wanted to be one. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer. I wrote my first set of stories when I was about seven. I used to read a lot of Enid Blyton. My father subscribed to a lot of newspapers and there were these newspapers that had competitions and I would send my stories to them. When I was seven-and-a-half I won the first prize in a competition and of course when you win it pushes you to write more. From then onwards there was no looking back.

Do you agree that kids these days are spending all their time on screens instead of reading?

Children have access to a lot of things but i’m gonna say that children will be readers if parents are readers. If your parents are reading and if that’s something that is part of their routine, kids are much more likely to read. The other thing pertains to what constitutes reading, for example audiobooks are reading. People are moving towards shorter writing – we are reading short quotes, memes, WhatsApp forwards. So it’s not that we are not reading but we are just consuming content differently. This kind of brevity is something that writers can capitalize on as well.

Letter writing
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unsplash

As a children’s author, do you feel like you have a moral responsibility to carry?

I am gonna say yes and no. No, because I dislike books with an agenda. A story should be a story, it does not have the job of teaching you a lesson. But I do have a moral responsibility, but it’s restricted to the idea that I will not perpetuate stereotypes that are harmful in any way whether it’s cultural or gendered. Even in The Wall Friends Club the socio-economic element is a strong element but as a writer the reason why I include that is for the emotional element and not for teaching.

What is that one thing that keeps you going as a writer?

I just love to write, I love stories. In some ways, creating something is what makes me human. It’s the urge to make good art and try to see what I can do, something that’s new, different, and fun.

On a lighter note, do you prefer e-books or print?

Anything, really. I am such an omnivorous reader. I have my Kindle, my laptop and my books and I read something on all of them. I prefer books only because my eyes are tired from spending time on the screen. But reading on the Kindle is an equal experience for me.

Published – February 12, 2026 10:35 pm IST