Veena Gokhale, an immigrant shape shifter, has worked as a journalist, teacher, reviewer, literary curator, and in the non-profit sector. She has also given Indian, vegetarian cooking classes. Veena has published Bombay Wali and Other Stories, Land for Fatimah, a novel (Guernica Editions, 2013 & 2018), and Annapurna’s Bounty, Indian Food Legends Retold (Dundurn Press, 2025). Annapurna’s Bounty is included in several recommended reading lists, among them, CBC’s 14 Canadian short story collections to read for Short Story Month, and July 2025 reads in Ms. Magazine, USA. She lives in Tiohtià:ke-Montréal.
Gokhale’s third publication, Annapurna’s Bounty, recasts Indian food legends for the twenty-first-century palate. Here, food manifests as ploy, bargain, symbolic communication, a bone of contention, a lesson, as it weaves through the lives of a cast of characters — kings and commoners, witches and goddesses, gurus and bandits, refugees and travellers. Each story is followed by a vegetarian recipe offered up by a character.
Using the book as a base, Veena wants to facilitate discussions on:
- how food variously manifests in our lives, in positive and sometimes negative ways
- inviting students to explore food legends from their cultures and depictions of food in literature
- and reflecting on their family food traditions and patterns, including their own relationship with food
Visit her at: www.veenago.com