AWP23—V.V. Ganeshananthan

F***ing Shakespeare

V.V. Ganeshananthan is an author, poet, and journalist, whose works have been featured in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota as a McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor of English. Ganeshananthan also co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast with Whitney Terrell, which explores writers and literature as mouthpieces for our cultural landscape.

In this episode, we talk about Ganeshananthan’s 18-year-long writing process for her latest novel. Ganeshananthan maps her journey with Brotherless Night, from “bluffing her way into” a novella class during her own time as an MFA student to her techniques for “fielding facial expressions” of doubt over the novel’s completion. We revel in our common ground in the literary ecosystem, with Bloomsday poet Jabari Asim and Kate and Jessica’s longtime mentor, Michael Knight, both appearing on the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast. While fondly recounting how MFA writers at the University of Minnesota experiment in “speed-dating” to “workshop the workshop,” Ganeshananthan reflects on the value of an MFA program that isn’t genre-siloed and the living body of work that speaks to writers of color. Finally, while celebrating the release of Brotherless Night and asking what’s next for Ganeshananthan’s writing, we try to “remember how to start things.”

Honorable Mentions

• Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan

• Fiction/Non/Fiction

• University of Minnesota MFA

• Letters to A Writer of Color edited by Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro

• Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues by Kavita Das

photo credit Sophia Mayrhofer

Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair