Book Launch: Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese

Thursday, August 10, 6:00 pm

Toronto author Anuja Varghesewill launch her debut book of short stories Chrysalis (House of Anansi, 2023) at Librairie L’Euguélionne (1426 Rue Beaudry) on Thursday, August 10 beginning at 6 PM. The event will be hosted by Brooke Lee and will also include a reading from Montreal writer H. Felix Chau Bradley. 

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About the Writers

Anuja Varghese is a QWOC Pushcart-nominated writer whose work appears in Hobart, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Plenitude Magazine, Southern Humanities Review, So to Speak Journal, Flock Literary Journal, and Corvid Queen: A Journal of Feminist Fairy Tales, among others. Her work has been recognized in the PRISM International Short Fiction Contest, the Pigeon Pages Fiction Contest, and the Alice Munro Festival Short Story Competition. She writes literary fiction, speculative fiction, and erotica/romance—and combinations of all three—where women of colour get leading roles. In 2022, Anuja has work included in When Other People Saw Us, They Saw the Dead, an anthology of BIPOC gothic horror from Haunt Press, and Queer Little Nightmares, an anthology of queer monster stories from Arsenal Pulp Press. Her debut short story collection titled Chrysalis, exploring South Asian diaspora experience through a feminist, speculative lens, will be released in spring 2023 with House of Anansi.

Anuja is also a professional grant writer, book reviewer, and editor and in 2021, took on the role of Fiction Editor with The Ex-Puritan Magazine. She holds a degree in English Literature from McGill University and is currently pursuing a Creative Writing Certificate from the University of Toronto while working on an adult fantasy novel based on medieval India.

Anuja lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her partner, two cats, and two kids.

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H. Felix Chau Bradley is the author of Personal Attention Roleplay, a story collection that was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Kobo Rakuten Emerging Writer Prize in 2022. Their writing has appeared in carte blanche, Cosmonauts Avenue, the Humber Literary Review, Maisonneuve Magazine, the Montreal Review of Books, PRISM International, Weird Era, Xtra and elsewhere. They live in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal), and work as an editor for Metonymy Press, This Magazine, and Le Sigh.

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Brooke Lee is an emerging writer from Windsor-Essex, Ontario. She holds an MA in Education from McGill University, and writes fiction under the pen name River Lee. Her work will appear in On The Run Fiction (Aug 2023), and she is currently completing her debut novel—a queer coming-of-age story about a musician who is chasing dreams and facing realities. When not writing, you can find her playing guitar, hiking, or reading the latest book for the Violet Hour Book Club. Keep an eye out for her upcoming work on Instagram @riverlee_writer