Nandini Bhattacharya is a renowned literary fiction novelist, born and raised in India but has resided in the United States for the past three decades. She has turned to books and reading to find answers to life's questions, no matter how big or small. Bhattacharya is best known for her debut novel, "Love's Garden," but she has also had her short fiction published in various magazines and publications such as "Ozone Park Journal," "Meat for Tea: the Valley Review," "OyeDrum," "Storyscape Journal," "The Bangalore Review," "The Bacon Review," and "Raising Mothers."
Bhattacharya has been an active participant in the writing community, attending writer conferences and workshops for many years. She has held residencies at the VONA, Vermont Studio Center, Craigardan Writers, and has attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Workshop. Her work has been recognized in several literary awards, including being a finalist for the 2019 Reynolds-Price International Women's Literary Award, the longlist for the 2019 and 2020 Disquiet International Literary Prize, the finals for the 2018 Fourth River Folio Contest for Prose Prize, and coming in second at the 2017-2018 Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction contest.
Bhattacharya is currently working on her second novel, "Homeland Blues," which explores themes of love, caste, colorism, violent religious fundamentalism in India, and racism and xenophobia in post-Donald Trump America. She has also published her work in Oyster River Pages, Sky Island Journal, the Saturday Evening Post Best Short Stories from the Great American Fiction Contest Anthology 2021, the Good Cop/Bad Cop Anthology (Flowersong Press, 2021), Funny Pearls, The Bombay Review, Meat for Tea: the Valley Review, The Bangalore Review, PANK, and more. Bhattacharya is a professor of English and an affiliate of the Women's and Gender Studies, Africana Studies and Film Studies programs at Texas A&M University. Her scholarly expertise lies in South Asia Studies and Indian Cinema, Postcolonial Studies and Colonial Discourse Analysis, Gender Theory, Film Studies, Critical Theory and Creative Writing.