Leela Soma

Leela Soma was a Scottish-based writer who was born in Madras (former name for Chennai) in India, and lived in Glasgow. She came to Glasgow in 1969 with her husband. She worked, until her retirement, as a teacher of Modern Studies. During this time she took up creative writing under the tutelage of Laura Marney. She followed this with Creative Writing Classes in the Department of Adult and Continuing Education at the University of Glasgow. She wrote novels, poetry and short stories which were published in a number of anthologies and publications, including The Scotsman, The Grind, New Voices, and Gutter magazine. In her novel, Murder at the Mela, she drew masterfully on her own dual-heritage to capture Glasgow’s richly multi-cultural nature in a work which is fascinating, engaging and intense. She died in 2022.