Shobha Rao (she/her)

Tiana Hunter

Shobha Rao is the author of "An Unrestored Woman," a short story collection, and the novels "Girls Burn Brighter" and "Indian Country." She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction and was a Grace Paley Teaching Fellow at The New School. Her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories. "Girls Burn Brighter" was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award and the Goodreads Choice Awards. She lives in San Francisco.

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Awards: Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction

Communities: Asian American

Women at the Crossroads

When the world pushes back, women push forward through friendship, acts of defiance, and sheer determination to take control of their lives. These three authors illuminate the many forms of female resilience, from intimate friendships to battles against systems designed to silence and constrain.

Student Union Santa Rita (Seats 110)  
Sat, Mar 14, 10:00 am - 10:55 am
Fiction / Literature
Signing area: UA Campus Store Book Sales (Mall) (following presentation)  

Panelists: Emily Nemens, Anna North, Shobha Rao
Moderator: Caitlin Schmidt

Stories of Self

In a rapidly changing world, how do we navigate identity, expectation, and belonging? This panel brings together three authors whose work captures the instability and reinvention of the self, illuminating how history, culture, and ambition collide in the search for meaning.

Koffler Room 218 (Seats 142, Wheelchair accessible)  
Sun, Mar 15, 1:00 pm - 1:55 pm
Fiction / Literature
Signing area: Sales & Signing Koffler/Commons (following presentation)

Panelists: Jade Chang, Ed Park, Shobha Rao
Moderator: Anne Gardner

Books:

Indian Country

A Novel
Fiction / Literature
Random House
August 2025
ISBN 9780593798959
Hardcover, 432 pages
Buy now

From the award-winning author of "Girls Burn Brighter," a couple from India—so different from generations of white colonialists who came before them—move to Montana, only to discover the secrets the land holds in this stunning literary novel. Janavi and Sagar were never meant to end up married. Janavi is a wonderfully independent, young modern Indian woman. She works for an organization in India that helps street children, often lost to the world of human trafficking. Sagar is a trained hydraulic engineer, an expert in dam construction. He is the least favorite son, his parents never able to forgive him for an unspeakable act from his past. Sagar seeks refuge in his daydreams of one day finding hidden treasures in the fabled Indian river, the Ganges. Yet the two are forced together into an arranged marriage which neither of them wants. Even worse, Sagar has already accepted a job in America, in a strange place called Montana, where he will be in charge of dismantling a dam. Montana upends all their expectations. Sagar's white colleagues do not welcome him with open arms, and Janavi finds herself unable to forgive her sister who stayed behind in India whose betrayal led her to this marriage and this strange place. When a colleague of Sagar's is found drowned, Sagar is the obvious scapegoat. But is this death one in a long history of people of color paying the price for the white man's arrogance and expansionism? Just like the Ganges river that dominates Sagar's dreams, throughout the novel runs short historical stories of settlers who conquered, both the west and India, who form the foundation upon which Sagar and Janavi stand. A bold, ambitious, stunningly beautiful yet brutal novel about colonialism and the rippling ramifications still felt today, "Indian Country" is a tour de force modern-day classic. More/less

Girls Burn Brighter

A Novel
Fiction / Literature
Flatiron Books
March 2019
ISBN 9781250309501
Trade Paperback, 416 pages
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A searing, electrifying debut novel set in India and America, about a once-in-a-lifetime friendship between two girls who are driven apart but never stop trying to find one another again. When Poornima first meets Savitha, she feels something she thought she lost for good when her mother died: hope. Poornima's father hires Savitha to work one of their sari looms, and the two girls are quickly drawn to one another. Savitha is even more impoverished than Poornima, but she is full of passion and energy. She shows Poornima how to find beauty in a bolt of indigo cloth, a bowl of yogurt rice and bananas, the warmth of friendship. Suddenly their Indian village doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic, and Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond the arranged marriage her father is desperate to lock down for her. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend again. Her journey takes her into the darkest corners of India's underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle. Alternating between the girls’ perspectives as they face relentless obstacles, "Girls Burn Brighter" introduces two heroines who never lose the hope that burns within them. In breathtaking prose, Shobha Rao tackles the most urgent issues facing women today: domestic abuse, human trafficking, immigration, and feminism. At once a propulsive page-turner and a heart-wrenching meditation on friendship, Rao's debut novel is a literary tour de force. More/less