Additional information
by Meghana Mysore (Author)
In Meghana Mysore's debut short story collection, present-day women and girls of the South Asian diaspora grapple with belonging and are haunted by intergenerational inheritances. Mysore, herself the daughter of Indian immigrants, spins her stories around narrators struggling to assimilate into the surreal world around them. In the world of these stories, ghosts are real--in "Repair Shop," dead mothers reappear as chiding, broken-down cars; in "Hoarder," the narrator's ex-lovers transform into scarves that won't let her go. In another story, a daughter, trapped inside her grief, spends her days Face Timing with her dead father, watching him become a young man she never knew.
At turns absurd and darkly humorous, and sometimes speculative, Mysore's stories touch on real-life experiences of intergenerational trauma, womanhood, the fluidity of desire and longing, and coming home to one's body. Her characters have faced violences small and large, holding losses that bind them to their pasts and weigh them down in daily life. Each of these stories contains an experience of transformation, be it small or monumental for these women, who find spaces of freedom and delight within their circumstances.
Back Jacket
For readers of stories by Gina Chung, K-Ming Chang, Susan Choi, Cleo Qian, and Jessie Ren Marshall, a collection of short stories both speculative and realistic.
In this powerful debut collection, present-day women of the South Asian diaspora grapple with belonging and are haunted by intergenerational inheritances. Meghana Mysore, herself the daughter of Indian immigrants, spins her stories around narrators struggling to assimilate into the surreal world around them. At times, this disorientation skews speculative, where deceased mothers reappear as chiding, broken-down cars. At turns absurd and darkly humorous, the women in Mysore's stories all experience transformation, be it small or monumental, where they find spaces of freedom and delight within their circumstances.
Meghana Mysore's stories, essays, and poems have appeared in The Yale Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Audacity, and more. She is the winner of the 2025 Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction. Mysore has been a Steinbeck Fellow and a scholar at Tin House and Bread Loaf. She holds an MFA from Hollins University and a BA in English from Yale. Mysore currently teaches as visiting faculty at Bucknell.
Author Biography
Meghana Mysore's stories, essays, and poems have appeared in The Yale Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Audacity, and more. She is the winner of the Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction. Mysore has been a Steinbeck Fellow and a scholar at McCormack Writing Center and Bread Loaf. She holds an MFA from Hollins University and a BA in English from Yale. Mysore has taught as visiting faculty at Amherst College and Bucknell University, and is assistant professor of English and creative writing at Randolph College in central Virginia.
