Chaitali Sen is the author of a novel The Pathless Sky (Europa Editions, 2015) and the story collection A New Race of Men from Heaven (Sarabande Books, 2023), winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction. Her short stories and essays have been published in Ecotone, Shenandoah, New England Review, New Ohio Review, Colorado Review, Electric Literature, LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Catapult, and many other publications. Kirkus Reviews called The Pathless Sky “a searingly vivid portrayal of the depths of human emotions-from the first glow of young love to the deeper strength of middle-aged commitment. A poignant and sophisticated work couched in lyrical, effervescent prose.” Scroll.in, one of the largest online publications in India, said, “Chaitali Sen’s novel is a universal exploration of how political violence tests the noblest of human emotions.” Poet and memoirist Abeer Hoque compared it to Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West as a “more contained and compelling book with less conceit.” It was a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best First Fiction, and included on Idra Novey’s Buzzfeedlist “10 Books That Challenge Our Political Landscape by Inventing New Ones,” Library Journal’s “Top Fall Indie Fiction,” and Mic.com’s “25 Essential Reads to Make Women’s History Last Longer than a Month.”
She is the founder of the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice, and has been a frequent panelist and presenter for Writers League of Texas, Grub Street’s Muse & Marketplace Conference, Texas Book Festival, and The Asian American Writers Workshop. She was a featured writer at the New Voices Festival at Ithaca College in 2017 and at the first annual Tasveer South Asian Literary Festival in Seattle in 2019. She is currentlly at work on her second novel.
