Selma Carvalho is the author of three non-fiction books documenting the Goan presence in colonial East Africa. Between 2011-2014 Selma directed a £40,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund UK to document the oral histories of East African Goans who later emigrated to Britain, now archived at the British Library and Bexley Libraries. She curated the first ever East African Goan exhibition at the Nehru Centre London. Her work in the field has also been published across a number of journals internationally, including a forthcoming essay in the academic journal Anais de História de Além-Mar, Centre for the Humanities, Lisbon.
In fiction, she is the author of two novels Sisterhood of Swans and Notes on a Marriage both published by Speaking Tiger India. Her first novel was shortlisted for the Women Writers Prize and listed among six notable books of 2021 by Asian Review of Books. She has been short-listed in numerous short story contests and is the winner of the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize. Her work appears in various anthologies including The Greatest Goan Stories Ever Told by Aleph and The London Short Story Prize 2017 by Kingston University Press.
Selma’s latest, a magisterial new history of Goans in Zanzibar, explores a uniquely liminal moment in colonial empire and is being represented by A Suitable Agency.