On Writing Fiction, Interdisciplinarity, and Imagining Futures -- March 6, 2019

Event Date: 

Wednesday, March 6, 2019 - 3:30pm to 5:00pm

Event Location: 

  • Asian American Studies Conference Room - HSSB 5024

In his short story collection, The Blind Writer, Pandya explores the cultural dislocation experienced by first and second generation Indian immigrants in California. In this talk, Pandya analyzes two stories from the book—one about an ambitious mother, the other about an envious father—in order to locate his fiction writing practice in an interdisciplinary space and considers how fiction can be a means of imagining futures within the larger context of ethnic studies. 

Sameer Pandya is the author of the short story collection, The Blind Writer, longlisted for the 2016 PEN/Open Book Award, and the recipient of the PEN/Civitella Foundation Fellowship.  His forthcoming novel, Members Only, will be out in 2020 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. His scholarship and cultural criticism have appeared in the Journal of Asian American Studies, Amerasia, South Asian Popular Culture, The Atlantic, Salon, and Sports Illustrated