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Anuja Varghese’s ‘Chrysalis’ sheds light on queer South Asian women
Varghese’s book explores South Asian diaspora’s experience through a feminist lens
Anuja Varghese’s book features 15 short stories exploring the South Asian diaspora’s queer experience / (Image- anujavarghese.com)
Award-winning writer Anuja Varghese’s debut book ‘Chrysalis’ provides a convergence of queer people and South Asian women. The book explores the South Asian diaspora’s experience through a feminist and speculative lens.
‘Chrysalis’ is a collection of 15 short narratives. It won the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award in the Fiction category.
The award, administered by the Canada Council for Arts, recognizes the best Canadian books written in English and French, across seven categories. The winners receive prizes worth $25,000.
Talking about the impact of her book on readers, Varghese, in a chat with the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), said, “One of the most rewarding things has been having people – usually a younger or an older person of colour – reach out to me or come up to me at events, and they'll say, ‘Thank you for writing this. It’s the first time I’ve seen myself in a story like this,’ or ‘In this particular story, that's me!’”
“I'm trying to get across that even though we traditionally haven't seen ourselves with that kind of main character energy in the mainstream, we're worthy of it,” Varghese added.
Prior to her debut book, Varghese contributed to several magazines and digital literary journals like The Mahalat Review and Corvid Queen: A Journal of Feminist Fair Tale, among others. She writes literary fiction, speculative fiction, and erotica/romance, along with a combination of the three genres with women as the lead character.
Her work has been recognized in the PRISM International Short Fiction Contest, the Pigeon Pages Fiction Contest, and the Alice Munro Festival Short Story Competition. She graduated from TMU’s The Chang School for Continuing Education’s Nonprofit and Volunteer Management certificate program in 2019.
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