Shubha Sunder’s debut short story collection, Boomtown Girl, won the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award. Her debut novel, Optional Practical Training, will be published in 2025 by Graywolf Press.

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. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Flannery O’Connor Short Story Award, the Hudson Prize, and the New American Press Fiction Prize. She is a 2020 recipient of the City of Boston Artist Fellowship Award and a 2016 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. Other distinctions include the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, Narrative “30 Below,” and awards from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences and from the Corporation of Yaddo. She teaches creative writing at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.