Shubha Sunder is a 2025 Whiting Award winner and the author of Optional Practical Training, an immigrant novel in conversations that won the New American Voices Award and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Her first book, Boomtown Girl, a short story collection set in her hometown of Bangalore, India, won the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award.
Shubha’s stories and essays have appeared in places like Catapult, The Common, New Letters, Crazyhorse, and Narrative Magazine, and received notable mentions in Best American Short Stories.
She currently teaches in the creative writing MFA program at UMass Boston.
Shubha Sunder 