My nonfiction includes journalism and memoir. My MFA thesis in creative nonfiction won the 2014 Myra Sklarew Award.
Journalism
Power of Print for D.C.-Area South Asians, New America Media.
Rajan George, editor-in-chief of India This Week and Express India, runs a one-person show these days. “I used to have five people in the office once upon a time,” he said, thinking back over the paper’s 23-year history.
Lower Georgia Ave. Looks to the Future, AWOL: American Way of Life, April 2013.
When a conspicuously white reporter walks into Eagles Barber Shop on lower Georgia Avenue, several guys there have a question. “You going to write a story about gentrification?”
Many Paths to God, D.C. Intersections, May 2013.
Vibha Chawla of Ashburn, Va., wonders how to explain Hinduism to her teenage son and daughter. They have a hundred questions, she says. Although she grew up in India, she isn’t sure how to answer them. Hinduism doesn’t have creeds or pillars to summarize the faith, in contrast to Christianity or Islam. Understanding Hindu ideas takes study, even for those born and raised with the religion. So Chawla researches her kids’ questions in ways familiar to Americans of all faiths: “I Google. I call my Mom.”
Memoir & Essays
I wrote about my long-running passion for essays in Hunger Mountain’s 2012 interview here (thanks to the Wayback Machine).
“Thief of Souls,” in Show Me All Your Scars, edited by Lee Gutkind, InFact Books, 2016.
Our New York, Too, Will Disappear, Hunger Mountain Online, Sept. 11, 2012.
Forward, Crack the Spine, issue 220, 2017.
“The Restless Dust,” Hunger Mountain, Autumn 2012.