Arun Sood is a Scottish-Indian writer, musician and academic working across multiple forms.  He was born in Aberdeen to a West-Highland Mother and a Punjabi father, and has since lived in Glasgow, Amsterdam, DC, and now South Devon where he is Lectuer in Global Literatures at the University of Exeter.  

 

Arun’s hybrid critical and creative practice spans across sound art, fiction, academic publications, editorials, and critically acclaimed albums made up of field-recordings, guitars, accordion, piano, spoken word and programmed synths.  Broadly, his varied outputs engage with diasporic identities, heritage, ancestry, language, and memory.

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Arun’s compositions have been described by Elizabeth Alker (BBC3/Unclassified) as like “fragments of memories spoken and images conjured through sound and field recordings, strings and electronics and tape loops that ebb and swirl like the tide”; while Jude Rogers (of The Guardian) describes how “the spirit of sonic collage holds echoes of other Scottish works such as King Creosote and Jon Hopkins’ Mercury-nominated Diamond Mine, but Sood’s accordions, cellos and pianos also meet more abrasive textures.”

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Arun's books include Robert Burns and the United States of America: Poetry, Print, and Memory, c. 1786-1886  (a critical study of the Romantic poet and song-collector Robert Burns in Global contexts);  New Skin For The Old Ceremony: A Kirtan (a 'road novel' exploring notions of home, heritage, and belonging among the South Asian diaspora); and Searching Erskine (a non-fiction artbook exploring the intersections between art, ecology, and place released with his 2022 album, soon to be re-issued on 12" vinyl in 2024.  Arun's essays and reviews have appeared the Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. 

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