Mayank Bhatt 1962-2022
Mayank Bhatt co-founded the Tartan Turban Secret Readings with his friend, fellow writer and Indo-Canadian Gavin Barrett, in 2017, shortly after his first novel Belief was published in 2016, by Mawenzi House the award-winning independent publishing house run by Nurjehan Aziz and MG Vassanji.
The novel explores youth radicalization and alienation, and the impact of terrorism on a family in the context of the failure of the immigration and settlement framework in Canada.
Mayank began his career with successful stints as a journalist and publicist in Mumbai (Bombay), before immigrating to Toronto with his family in 2008. In Canada, Mayank plunged himself into re-establishing his writing career, with courses at Humber College and Sheridan. His short stories were published in TOK 5: Writing the New Toronto and Canadian Voices II.
On his journey as an immigrant, he worked as a security guard, as the Chief Administrative Officer of the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce and as an organizer for the Festive of South Asian Literature and Art.
On the 1st of August 2022, Mayank passed away after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer, a journey he documented with plangent truthfulness and painful clarity in the pages of The Beacon, an online long-format journal he co-founded, and helped shape when he became its Executive Editor in 2018.
Mayank’s friends and family have set up a Humber writing scholarship to keep his memory alive. The Mayank and Mahrukh Bhatt Scholarship will support a student enrolled in the Humber School for Writers: Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing who is of high merit and in financial need.
The Tartan Turban Secret Readings 