Vauhini Vara

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Vauhini Vara is a Canadian and American journalist and author. She has written and edited for The Atlantic, The New Yorker , and The New York Times Magazine . [1] Her debut novel, The Immortal King Rao was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada to Indian immigrants, Vauhini Vara was raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada, and in Edmond, Oklahoma and Seattle, Washington in the United States. After graduating from Stanford University in 2004, she became a technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal . In 2008 she took a leave of absence from the WSJ to attend the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She graduated with her MFA in 2010 and then returned to the WSJ for the next three years. [3]

Career

Vara was a technology reporter at The Wall Street Journal for almost ten years, covering Silicon Valley and California politics. [4] [5] In 2013, she left The Wall Street Journal to work at The New Yorker 's website. [6] She has also published articles in The New York Times Magazine , The Atlantic , Harper's Magazine , Fast Company , Bloomberg Businessweek , WIRED , and elsewhere. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Vara is a recipient of the O. Henry Award for her story "I Buffalo". [3] She has published stories in Tin House , ZYZZYVA , and other publications, and her fiction writing has received honors from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, MacDowell, and Yaddo. [13] [14] [3] In 2021, she wrote the viral piece "Ghosts", a nine-part essay about losing her older sister to cancer, using an early model of GPT-3, the AI that would become ChatGPT. [15]

Vara is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Colorado State University for 2023-24. [16]

Her debut novel, The Immortal King Rao, was published in 2022. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction [17] and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. [18] [19] In India, the novel won the Atta Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize and the Times of India AutHer Award. [20] [21] Wiip is developing a television series based on the book. [22] In 2023, Vara released a short story collection, This Is Salvaged. [23]

Personal life

Vara is on the board of the Krishna D. Vara Foundation. [24] She lives in Colorado with her husband Andrew Foster Altschul. They have one son.

Bibliography

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References

  1. ↑ "Vauhini Vara". W.W. Norton.
  2. ↑ "Fiction". The Pulitzer Prizes.
  3. 1 2 3 "The O. Henry Prize Stories: Author Spotlight Vauhini Vara". Random House. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  4. ↑ "Vauhini Vara".
  5. ↑ "Vauhini Vara Staff reporter, The Wall Street Journal". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  6. ↑ "Vauhini Vara". The New Yorker.
  7. ↑ Vara, Vauhini (27 December 2019). "My Decade in Google Searches". The New York Times.
  8. ↑ Vara, Vauhini (May 2017). "Bee-Brained Inside the competitive Indian-American spelling community". Harpers Magazine. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  9. ↑ Vara, Vauhini (October 27, 2016). "Clothing Keeps Getting Cheaper, and Factory Workers Are Paying the Price". Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  10. ↑ Vara, Vauhini (June 2016). "The Energy Interstate". The Atlantic. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  11. ↑ "Vauhini Vara". WIRED. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  12. ↑ Vara, Vauhini. "We Will Literally Predict their Outcomes". WIRED. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  13. ↑ "About". Vauhini Vara.
  14. ↑ "Vauhini Vara - News, Articles, Biography, Photos". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2015-03-23.
  15. ↑ "Ghosts". The Believer.
  16. ↑ "Vauhini Vara named 2023-2024 Visiting Assistant Professor of English". Colorado State University.
  17. ↑ "Fiction". The Pulitzer Prizes.
  18. ↑ "The National Book Critics Circle Awards". Book Critics.
  19. ↑ "2022 First Novel Prize". The Center for Fiction.
  20. ↑ "Vauhini Vara Wins The Bangalore Literature Festival-Atta Galatta Book Prize". Explocity. 4 December 2022.
  21. ↑ "AutHer Award 2023: Complete list of winners". Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. Times of India. 20 March 2023.
  22. ↑ Porter, Rick (2023-03-07). "Wiip Nabs 'Immortal King Rao' Novel to Adapt for TV (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
  23. ↑ Rivers, Hana (2023-08-28). "Grief, girls and the gross in Vauhini Vara's new collection". High Country News. Retrieved 2024-10-27.
  24. ↑ "The KDV Award". KDV Award.
  25. ↑ Escoffery, Jonathan (2023-10-22). "New Stories Put a Complicated Spin on Familiar Traumas". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-12-03.
  26. ↑ Vara, Vauhini (2023-09-18). "Jhumpa Lahiri and Me". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-12-03.
  27. ↑ "Vauhini Vara's 'This is Salvaged' explores womanhood, art as social activism". www.wbur.org. 2023-10-16. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
  28. ↑ Venkataramanan, Meena. "Vauhini Vara's 'This Is Salvaged' deals in flesh and blood - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
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