In Akil Kumarasamy’s work, borders rarely stay still. They flicker, blur, and sometimes dissolve entirely—between countries and within them, across generations, between the living and the dead, the remembered and the imagined. Her stories move through these thresholds with a quiet intensity, asking what it means to inhabit more than one place, more than one self, at once. Liminality, in her hands, is not just a state of in-betweenness but a charged space where identity is continually made and unmade.
In this conversation, we’ll explore how her writing navigates these shifting terrains—how migration reshapes time, how history lingers in intimate ways, and how her characters negotiate belonging across fractured geographies. We’ll also turn to the intersections of queerness and feminism in her work: how desire, power, and resistance emerge within constrained worlds, and how her stories open up new possibilities for imagining selfhood beyond fixed categories.
Together, these themes invite a deeper look at the porous edges of identity and the creative potential that exists in crossing—and recrossing—them.
