Nandini Bhattacharya

I was born and raised in India and have called the United States my second continent for the last thirty years. Wherever I've lived, I've generally turned to books for the answers to life's question, big or small (that includes philosophy and recipes). My short stories have been published or will be in the Saturday Evening Post Best Short Stories from the Great American Fiction Contest Anthology 2021 (forthcoming 2021), the Good Cop/Bad Cop Anthology (Flowersong Press, 2021), the Gardan Anthology of the Craigardan Artists Residency, Funny Pearls, The Bombay Review, Meat for Tea: the Valley Review, Storyscape Journal, Raising Mothers, The Bangalore Review, OyeDrum, and more. I've attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Workshop and been accepted for residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, VONA, Centrum Writer's Residency, and the Ragdale Artist's Residency (forthcoming), among others. I was first runner-up for the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction contest (2017-2018), a finalist for the Fourth River Folio Contest for Prose Prize (2018), long-listed for the Disquiet International Literary Prize (2019 and 2020), a finalist for the Reynolds-Price International Women's Literary Award (2019), and a finalist for the Saturday Evening Post Great American Stories Contest, 2021

My first novel, Love's Garden, is an epic saga of Indian women living through a century of war and decolonization, and available to pre-order at Amazon and Aubade Publishing

Reviewers hail it as "wonderfully dense and wise," "gripping," and "a journey into India's complex past" and 'what women will do to protect those they love" -- an epic saga of Indian women living through a century of war and decolonization

I'm currently working on a second novel about love, minorities, racism, and Hindutva politics in India and xenophobic mentalities and other mysteries in Donald Trump's America, titled Homeland Blues. I love (and read) Jhumpa Lahiri, Megha Majumdar, Amitav Ghosh, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Salman Rushdie, and last but not least, Chimamanda Adichie. I live outside Houston and serve a teenager and a marmalade cat.