- This event has passed.
Chaya Bhuvaneswar discusses her new story collection, White Dancing Elephants with Lydia Kiesling
October 23, 2018 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm UTC+0
Chaya Bhuvaneswar discusses her new story collection, White Dancing Elephants with Lydia Kiesling.
Praise for White Dancing Elephants
“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
“A bold, honest, often provocative first collection from a fresh new voice.” Jeff VanderMeer
“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
About 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. And fragments of history, from child brickmakers to slaves in Renaissance Portugal, are held up in brief fictions, burnished, made dazzling and unforgettable.
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. 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.