Anjali Sachdeva
Photo by Thurner Photography
Bio
Anjali Sachdeva’s short story collection, All the Names They Used for God, was the winner of the 2019 Chautauqua Prize. It was named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, longlisted for the Story Prize, and chosen as the 2018 Fiction Book of the Year by the Reading Women podcast. Sachdeva has taught writing at the University of Iowa, Augustana College, and Carnegie Mellon University, and worked for six years as the director of Educational Programs at the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh and teaches in the MFA program at Randolph College. She has hiked through the backcountry of Canada, Iceland, Kenya, Mexico, and the United States, and spent much of her childhood reading fantasy novels and waiting to be whisked away to an alternate universe. Instead, she lives in Pittsburgh, which is pretty wonderful as far as places in this universe go.
These days, my writing life proceeds in fragments. I have two toddlers and teach full time, so there’s always something other than writing that demands my attention. I love teaching, and of course I love my kids. But sometimes I’m keenly aware of how infrequently I get to follow a line of thought to its conclusion, let alone write for as many hours as I’d like. As often as I can, I drum up an inflexible deadline for myself, something that will push me to stay up writing late into the night when I’d usually sleep, or between classes when I might otherwise be tempted to spend time online. But in between deadlines, all those unwritten words are like a pressure building up inside my head. This fellowship will give me the chance to immerse myself in the ideas, characters, and fictional worlds that I currently visit only in stolen moments, and I’m incredibly grateful for that opportunity.