Vajra Chandrasekera's Blog

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...

Pith helmet drawn by David Ring for the Europeana Fashion project, 2o14.

Nandini and I saw Med Hondo’s Soleil Ô (1970) at its recent Anthology Film Archives screening, where it was part of a program on Malcolm X. The connection to Malcolm X is somewhat tenuous: he appears in the form of a poster, alongside other revolutionary icons such as Che and Patrice Lumumba, during the final sequence of Robert Liensol screaming and running through a forest to escape the horrors of bucolic white French c...

Judith by Raja Ravi Varma, c. 1890, apparently inspired by (and a curious inverted-Orientalist response to) Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant’s Judith of the preceding decade.

The funniest bit in the Malayalam film കഥാപുരുഷൻ (Kathapurushan, 1995) is when the boy Kunjunni comes home crying from school and his grandmother asks with concern if he’s being bullied for his stutter. No, the boy says: he’s crying because his teacher called him petit bourgeois.

As the film‘s title suggests—lit. st...

I’m incredibly happy to say that Rakesfall is shortlisted for the 2025 Le Guin Prize! A huge thank you to everyone who nominated it, and to the jury and the wonderful folks at the Foundation for all the work that you do. Many congrats to my fellow nominees this year: Andrea Hairston, Nalo Hopkinson, Margaret Killjoy, Jared Pechaček, Eden Robins, Nghi Vo, and Ursula Whitcher!

The Saint of Bright Doors was also a Le Guin Prize finalist last year, so I think that makes me the first-ever...

Rakesfall has won the Otherwise Award (formerly known as the Tiptree) which now awards multiple winners per year: Rakesfall is one of four, alongside Emet North’s In Universes, Walking Practice by Dolki Min, translated by Victoria Caudle, and “Kiss of Life” by P.C. Verrone. Many congratulations to my co-winners and the longlistees! The announcement page linked above includes some very kind words from the Otherwise juror Sophia Babai, who says:

Rakesfall is a bizarre, brilliant, relen...