We’re thrilled to welcome award-winning writer Shashi Bhat to Transatlantic!Shashi’s fiction has appeared in The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, Grain, PRISM international, Best Canadian Stories 2018, Journey Prize Stories 24 & 30, and other publications. She was the winner of the 2018 Journey Prize, and a 2018 National Magazine Award finalist for fiction. In 2010, she was a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award. Her debut novel, The Family Took Shape (Cormorant, 2013), was a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Shashi holds an MFA in fiction from The Johns Hopkins University. She is the editor-in-chief of EVENT Magazine and teaches creative writing at Douglas College.
Shashi is working on a novel-in-stories called The Most Precious Substance on Earth, following a 14-year-old who has a traumatic experience at her high school and then grows up to become a high school teacher. The work examines the subtle ways in which women are conditioned and silenced, and the influence teachers have over the young people in their classrooms. These themes are intertwined with racial dynamics and set against a changing technological and sociopolitical backdrop.
Shashi is represented by Stephanie Sinclair.