A Paul and Daisy Soros fellow, Sanjena Sathian is a 2019 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has worked as a reporter in Mumbai and San Francisco, with nonfiction bylines for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Food & Wine, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more. And her award-winning short fiction has been published in Boulevard, Joyland, Salt Hill, and The Master’s Review. Her debut novel Gold Diggers is out now.
On April 20th, Sanjena will join Annabelle Gurwitch and Michelle Nijhuis in our next edition of “Seriously Entertaining” where they will each tell stories tied to the theme “Only Home We’ve Ever Known.” Register here for the show!
What are you reading right now for solace or escape or entertainment?
At the moment, I’m reading The Four Books by Yan Lianke. I’m not sure it’s solace, escape, OR entertainment, but it’s a completely brilliant, Kafkaesque satire about China’s Great Leap Forward.
If you could live inside a fictional world, which one would you choose?
It would be fun to be college friends with Selin from Elif Batuman’s The Idiot or to have drinks and kvetch with any of Lorrie Moore’s female characters.
Are there any quotes you use to inspire you?
From Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “The Art of Disappearing”: “When someone recognizes you in a grocery store/nod briefly and become a cabbage.”
