Chaya Bhuvaneswar & Genevieve Hudson

From Mother Foucault’s Website:

Join Chaya Bhuvaneswar Saturday, September 29 for a reading from her forthcoming short story collection White Dancing Elephants (Dzanc, 2018). Chaya reads with Genevieve Hudson, author of Pretend We Live Here (Future Tense, 2018)

In luminous, vivid, searingly honest prose, the stories in White Dancing Elephants center on the experiences of diverse women of color—cunning, bold, and resolute—facing sexual harassment and racial violence, as well as the violence women inflict upon each other.

Combining the speculative elements and wry psychological realism beloved by readers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Margaret Atwood, Danzy Senna and Sandra Cisneros, this collection introduces Chaya Bhuvaneswar as an original and memorable new voice.

CHAYA BHUVANESWAR is a practicing physician and writer whose work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Awl, jellyfish review, aaduna and elsewhere, with poetry forthcoming in Natural Bridge, Quiddity, apt magazine, Hobart and more. Her poetry and prose juxtapose Hindu epics, other myths and histories, and the survival of sexual harassment and racialized sexual violence by diverse women of color. She received the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and a Henfield award for her writing. Her work received four Pushcart Prize anthology nominations in 2017.

Combining the speculative elements and wry psychological realism beloved by readers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Margaret Atwood, Danzy Senna and Sandra Cisneros, this collection introduces Chaya Bhuvaneswar as an original and memorable new voice.

GENEVIEVE HUDSON is the author of A Little in Love with Everyone (Fiction Advocate, 2018) and the story collection Pretend We Live Here (Future Tense Books, 2018).

Her writing has been published in Catapult, Hobart, Tin House online, Joyland, The Millions, Lit Hub, The Collagist, No Tokens, Bitch, The Rumpus, and other places. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Tin House Summer Workshops, and fellowships and residencies from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Caldera Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center.

She received an MFA in creative writing from Portland State University, where she occasionally teaches fiction writing and gender studies courses. She splits her time between Portland, OR, and Amsterdam.

Praise for White Dancing Elephants

“A magnificent collection of stories that defy conventions, stereotypes, and reveal the universal complexity we all share as humans—gifted and flawed individuals, who struggle to reconcile the mixed signals of our own hearts.”
—Jamie Ford, author of House on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s debut collection maps with great assurance the intricate outer reaches of the human heart. What a bold, smart, exciting new voice, well worth listening to; what an elegant story collection to read and savor.”
—Lauren Groff, author of Florida

“Reading Chaya Bhuvaneswar is like receiving Lasik via literature—the world you return to is a little clearer and sharper for the time you’ve spent in her pages. She is a formidable talent, formally accomplished and intellectually alive.”
—Anthony Marra, Whiting-award winning author of The Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“Bhuvaneswar’s daring mix of ancient, contemporary, and dystopic stories carries us to the heart of rarely exposed longing, loss, and the politics of violence and endurance in remarkable, elegant, heart-stopping prose.”
—Jimin Han, author of A Small Revolution

“From the first page, I was swept away by the riveting undertow of Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s inventive and spellbinding stories, each moment cast in powerfully intelligent prose. White Dancing Elephants is a remarkable debut; we are so lucky to hold this book in our hands.”
—Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel

“White Dancing Elephants is a searing and complex collection, wholly realized, each piece curled around its own beating heart. Tender and incisive, Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a surgeon on the page; unflinching in her aim, unwavering in her gaze, and absolutely devastating in her prose. This is an astonishing debut.”
—Amelia Gray, author of Isadora

“A bold, honest, often provocative first collection from a fresh new voice.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation