White Dancing Elephants

A woman grieves a miscarriage, haunted by the Buddha's birth. An artist with schizophrenia tries to survive hatred and indifference in small-town India by turning to the beauty of sculpture and dance. Orphans in India get pulled into a strange "rescue" mission aimed at stripping their mysterious powers. A brief but intense affair between two women culminates in regret and betrayal. A boy seeks memories of his sister in the legend of a woman who weds death. In sixteen remarkable stories, Chaya Bhuvaneswar spotlights diverse women of color--cunning, bold, and resolute--facing sexual harassment and racial violence, and occasionally inflicting that violence on each other.

About the author

Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a physician and writer with work in Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Electric Lit, The Millions, Joyland, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. 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 has received a MacDowell Colony fellowship, Sewanee Writers Conference scholarship and Henfield award for her writing. Follow her on Twitter at @chayab77 including for upcoming readings and events.

Summary

Best Books of 2018 Kirkus Reviews (debut and short fiction categories)
Best Books of 2018, Entropy Magazine
A Book Club selection for The Wing, Rebel Women's Lit and Bookish.com
35 over 35 Debut Fiction Award
Finalist for the 2019 PEN American Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection

"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

"Stunning, evocative, electric...an exuberant collection."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred)

A woman grieves a miscarriage, haunted by the Buddha's birth. An artist with schizophrenia tries to survive hatred and indifference in small-town India by turning to the beauty of sculpture and dance. Orphans in India get pulled into a strange “rescue” mission aimed at stripping their mysterious powers. A brief but intense affair between two women culminates in regret and betrayal. A boy seeks memories of his sister in the legend of a woman who weds death. And fragments of history, from child brickmakers to slaves in Renaissance Portugal, are held up in brief fictions, burnished, made dazzling and unforgettable.

In seventeen remarkable stories, Chaya Bhuvaneswar spotlights diverse women of color—cunning, bold, and resolute—facing sexual harassment and racial violence, and occasionally inflicting that violence on each other. Winner of the 2017 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize, White Dancing Elephants marks the emergence of a new and original voice in fiction and explores feminist, queer, religious, and immigrant stories with precision, drama, and compassion.

Foreword

*Author appearances and wide-scale tour, including Toadstool, Harvard Bookstore, Porter Square Books, Newtonville Books, Literati, Books Are Magic (with Jillian Medoff), Phoenix Books, Housing Works, Powell's, and more
*Inclusion in Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books listing
*Will be featured in The Book Report's Reader's Guide in October
*Among Mysterious Galaxy's spotlight picks for Fall
*Forthcoming reviews in the New York Journal of Books, Chicago Review of Books, The Write Launch, Over the Rainbow, Mother Egg, and other venues
*Readings with Art Lit Lab, Arlington Author Salon, Franklin Park Reading Series, and the Women in Letters reading series
*Mass Galley Mailing
*Featured speaker for San Francisco Writers Conference in February 2019
*Will be a Tennesee Williams scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference
*Interviews in Cleaver, Del Sol Review, The Brown Orient, Other Stories, Split Lip Mag, The Millions, Bayou Magazine, Teal Mango, Aerogram, Hobart, Former Cactus, and Compose
*Features and excerpts in Catapult, Ploughshares Blog, Tin House, and Literary Hub
*In the run-up to publication, author work will appear in Lit Hub, Electric Lit, Joyland, Tin House, Asian American Literary Review, Ploughshares, The Millions, The Rumpus, Largehearted Boy, Autostraddle, Medium,, and other venues
*Reading and collaboration with the Asian American Writers' Workshop
*Will be featured on the podcasts Other Stories, The Secret Library, Mr Bear, LitPop, and Giant Panda, as well as Radio Boston
*Advanced Copy Giveaways through Goodreads and Amazon
*Advertising Co-op Available
*Egalleys available on Edelweiss

Product details

• Authors: Chaya Bhuvaneswar
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 09.10.2018
• EAN: 9781945814617
• ISBN: 978-1-945814-61-7
• No. of pages: 208
• Dimensions: 139 mm x 216 mm x 20 mm
• Weight: 269 g
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION / Cultural Heritage, FICTION / Contemporary Women, FICTION / Asian American, FICTION / Romance / LGBT / General