About
I grew up in Sri Lanka and lived in India, Thailand, Canada and Australia before settling in the United States. I have a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Chicago, and for many years, my day job was as a psychology professor. I was formerly a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University. I've also worked as a science writer for NASA, a biology researcher and a therapist in various settings, including a jail and two university counseling centers. Now, as a licensed psychologist, I have a private psychotherapy practice in New York and New Jersey.
I won the Iowa Short Fiction Award in 2018 and the Commonwealth Short Story Competition in 2004. I am the author of The Water Diviner and Other Stories (University of Iowa Press, 2018) and a novel, The Mask Collectors (Little A, 2019). I am currently working on a non-fiction book, under contract with Harvard University Press, on the creative, inspirational and spiritual voices normal people hear.
My short fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and my essays and short stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Summerset Review, Quiddity, Michigan Quarterly Review, Stand, The American Literary Review, The Examined Life, and many other venues.
Featured Work
The Mask Collectors
The alumni of an international boarding school have gathered at a campground in rural New Jersey when a scream breaks the silence of the woods. Classmates are shocked to find journalist Angie Osborne suddenly dead. The medical examiner’s report isn’t what anyone expects. Oddly, the death scene reminds anthropologist Duncan McCloud of a thovile, a Sri Lankan ritual he’s spent years studying.
When Duncan’s new employer, a pharmaceutical giant, sends him overseas under shadowy pretenses, and his wife, Dr. Grace McCloud, starts to receive anonymous warnings to doubt everyone and everything, the threads of a sweeping conspiracy begin to unravel. Risking more than their own lives, Duncan and Grace embark on a treacherous journey through occult ceremonies and their own hidden pasts to discover a secret worth killing for.
In taut, precise language, Ruvanee Pietersz Vilhauer’s debut novel The Mask Collectors tells a story about deception, the power of belief, and what is left unspoken between husbands and wives.
