Vajra Chandrasekera's Blog

The Madhouse, William Hogarth, 1735.

I haven’t kept up properly with reviews, links, and coverage over the past year. In my defense, it was quite a year. Here are some of the things I meant to share with you over that time but didn’t—some of them I did post on social media at the time, but here we are in the official blog of record.

First up, this wonderfully thoughtful review of Rakesfall along with Gene Wolfe’s Peace by Audsley King.

The reason Annelid kills Leveret, which the fando...

La Liseuse, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1769. On the right is an X-Ray of the painting which shows the ghostly imprint of an earlier version of the painting, where the reader is making eye contact with the viewer.

The text is the thing, but it is also not the thing: it is rather the thing that makes the thing happen. The thing is what happens to you, in your mind, in your body, when you read the text. This is generally true of all art in all forms, but fiction has the privilege of simplici...

From Essentials of Health: A Text-Book on Anatomy, Physiology, Hygiene, Alcohol, and Narcotics, Charles H. Stowell, 1898. The red hook is the aorta, which in some of us is troubled.

No cyclone has ever crossed the equator. The Coriolis effect, which is too small to be measured in your bathroom sink, is absolute at the scale of the hurricane, the typhoon, the tropical storm: below the equator, the storm spins with the clock, and above, against. In this, it is like gravity or political power, ...

Debbie Urbanski, me, and Will McMahon at the Ithaca Irrealist Reading at Liquid State Brewing, Ithaca on the 20th. My beard always looks bigger in pictures than it does in the mirror. Picture courtesy of Don Pizzaro.

The events prophesied by “Spring in Ithaca” have come to pass. Everything went great and everyone was lovely; Ithaca was cold, still wintery, and beautiful. Debbie’s story was hilarious and alarming. Nandini and I stayed at Will’s farm after and met the sheep and more importantl...

Giuseppe Bottani, Athena Appearing To Odysseus To Reveal The Island Of Ithaca (c. 1770s)

I’m doing two in-person events in Ithaca, NY in March, on the 19th and 20th, on the very cusp of the vernal equinox. Both events are free and open to anyone who wants to join in! Details below.

March 19: Speculative Fiction from South Asia: A Conversation with Vajra Chandrasekera, for the Cornell South Asia Program

At A. D. White House, Guerlac Room 29 East Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850, on Thursday, Marc...

It had been a while since I last curated original fiction for publication; I am very happy to have had the chance to do it again for two issues of The Deadlands, Issue #40 for Fall 2025 and Issue #41 for Winter 2026. The stories will be available online (the Issue #40 stories already are and the #41 stories will be gradually released over the coming weeks) but you can (and also should) buy the issues directly from their Patreon or from Weightless Books. These two issues were very much cu...

I will be one of the speakers/mentors at the Indian Ocean Writers’ Residency in Bentota, Sri Lanka from July 9‒15 2026. The residency is hosted by Tambapanni Academic Publishers, Colombo, in collaboration with the Max Weber Forum, New Delhi. Details for application and how to apply are at the Tambapanni website. Do check it out if you’re interested, and don’t wait—applications close January 31st 2026.

Here’s their description of the residency:

In July 2026, Tambapanni Academic Pu...

In the aftermath of Rakesfall winning the Le Guin Prize, I have a meaty new interview up at Reactor, a short one at Tasavvur, and a third, unfortunately paywalled, up at The Hindustan Times. Here’s a quote from the Reactor interview:

I tried to sabotage any sense of a just-so story about history, any definitive “this is how it went and this is how we got there”, because I find that not only boring but dangerous. Histories are multiple, shifting, and furiously active creatures, often far more...

The first thing they tell you when you find out you have papillary thyroid cancer is that it’s one of the best kinds of cancer to have because it’s so eminently treatable. It is a cancer replete with optimisms: everyone will tell you how lucky you are. They will open up your neck and take out the butterfly in your throat, and clinging to it by malign pincers, the crab will follow. We can only hope there isn’t a bucket of them in there. I have a surgery date scheduled soon: I hope to come out of ...

I am honoured, delighted, and deeply moved to be able to say that my second novel Rakesfall has won the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. See the official announcement at the Le Guin Foundation’s Youtube channel.

Many thanks to everyone at the Le Guin Foundation for making the award happen so smoothly every year; to all award jurors past and present, especially this year for their excellent taste; to my fellow shortlistees for the privilege of their wonderful company; to everyo...