Shilpi Suneja was born in India. She holds an MA in English from New York University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where she was awarded the Saul Bellow Prize. A 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, her work has won a Pushcart Prize nomination and appears in Guernica, McSweeney's, Cognoscenti, Asia Literary Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Little Fiction, Bat City Review, Hyphen, Consequence, and Kartika Review, among other places. In 2019 she was named the Desai Fellow at the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat. Her first novel, HOUSE OF CARAVANS that tells the story of her grandfather's migration during India's bloody Partition of 1947 is slated for publication in Fall 2022 from Milkweed Editions
Publications
BOOKS
- HOUSE OF CARAVANS, Milkweed Editions, Fall 2022
SHORT STORIES
- “Everything Sounds Beautiful in Urdu,” Ghost Post, 2020
- “Outside her Body,” Angime, 2020
- “Third World Instincts,” Asia Literary Review, 2018
- “Death on a Rickshaw,” Bat City Review, 2018
- “Unemployment,” Little Fiction, 2018; Pushcart Prize Nomination; Most Read Story
- “Noah’s Ark,” Stirring, 2018
- “My Mother the Arsonist,” Consequence, 2014
- “Housekeepin’,” 236, Boston University Alumni Magazine, 2011
- “The Simpleton,” Hyphen, 2010
- “A River Cannot be a River,” Meeting House Magazine, 2009
ESSAYS
- "Blood, Sweat, Turmeric," Guernica, 2021
- "Open Letter to My Thirty-Plus Year-Old Ovaries," McSweeney's, 2021
- "We all have Covid Until None of Us Have Covid," Cognoscenti, 2021
- “Those Who Can’t Travel, Cook,” Solstice Magazine, 2020
- “The Syncretic Saris of Banaras,” Michigan Quarterly Review, 2018
- “Choosing America,” Solstice Magazine, 2017
- “Seeing People: An Interview with Artist Annu Matthew,” Kartika Review, 2017
- “Welcome to Us, America!” GrubWrites, 2017
- “Bajrangi Bhaijan: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Shri Ram,” TwoCircles, 2015
- “Poet Jill McDonough Examines Technology and the Culture of Secrecy,” UMB News, 2015
- Interview with Daphne Kalotay, Breakwater Review, 2014
- “The Jamuriyat Road to Taksim Square,” Kafila.Online, 2013
- “Thwarting Terror: From Boston to Bombay, Let’s Create a New Circle of Empathy,” India Writes, 2013
- “Soni Sori and the Case of Indian Gallantry,” WRise Boston, 2013
- “Visiting Writer Howe Creates a Unique Kind of Prose that ‘Shatters into Poetry’,” UMB News, 2013
Awards
- Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat Desai Fellowship, 2019
- Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Author Fellowship, 2019
- Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, 2018
- National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, 2018
- Grub Street Novel Incubator Scholarship
- Grub Street Novel in Progress Scholarship
- Asian American Writers’ Workshop & Hyphen Magazine Story Award
- Boston University Creative Writing Dept. Saul Bellow Prize
- Boston University Creative Writing Dept. Robert Pinsky Graduate Award
- Harvard Book Store Set in Harvard Square Story Contest Winner
Education
- M.F.A. in Creative Writing – Fiction, UMass Boston
- M.F.A. in Creative Writing – Fiction, Boston University
- M.A. in English & American Literature, New York University
- B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics, NC State University
Courses
Fall Semester 2022
- ENG-100: Composition I
- ENG-100: Composition I
Summer Semester 2022
- ENG-100: Composition I
Spring Semester 2022
- ENG-100: Composition I
- ENG-100: Composition I
Fall Semester 2021
- ENG-273: Creative Writing: Heroes and Villains from Indigenous Worlds