Author Chitra Divakaruni enchants us with an astounding new novel
September 12, 2019, by Krupa Parikh
The true mark of a great writer is his or her ability to take the reader into a different world
To me the true mark of a great writer is his or her ability to take the reader into a different world, a distant time period, an alternate reality, and to somehow make that world, time period, or reality feel completely relevant and familiar. In seconds we can go from being absorbed in our work responsibilities, family life, and the provocative news headlines of the day, to becoming absorbed in the lives, struggles, and emotions of the characters we are reading about.
It is even more impressive when that said writer is able to breathe new life into a centuries old epic and turn that seemingly archaic story into a captivating novel. In The Forest of Enchantments, Houston author and American Book Award winner Chitra Divakaruni accomplishes this and so much more.
“We love meeting the wonderful aspiring writers from all walks of life who come to Inprint,” says Inprint Executive Director Rich Levy. “Some of them have been writing for a while and others are just taking a workshop as a hobby, supplementing an already busy work and family schedule. The thing that they all have in common is a desire to tell a story, whether through fiction, poetry, or personal essay. Learning how to shape one’s thoughts in writing is hard but also an exciting process, you learn so much about yourself, the world, and your place in it.”
Selena Anderson is one of the University of Houston’s newly minted PhD’s in Fiction. She completed her MFA at Columbia University where she won the Transatlantic/Henfield Prize. She has held fellowships at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, the Carson McCullers Center, and the MacDowell Colony. Her work appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, Joyland, Georgia Review, Callaloo, Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review Online, NANO Fiction, and elsewhere.
In her first year as a PhD student at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program (UH CWP), Novuyo Rosa Tshuma has already accomplished something extraordinary: international major press publication. Novuyo’s novel, The House of Stone, is forthcoming with W.W. Norton in the USA, and Atlantic Books in the United Kingdom. A recipient of the Inprint Fondren Foundation/Michael and Nina Zilkha Fellowship and an Inprint International Fellowship and a native of Zimbabwe, she has an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her first collection, Shadows, was published to critical acclaim in 2013 by Kwela in South Africa, and awarded the 2014 Herman Charles Bosman Prize.