February 2nd, 11 am ET
Morton Hall, Room 145
University of Alabama, Huntsville
Mulk R. Arora Endowed Lecture

This talk, along with a reading from The Immortal King Rao, is entitled “Writing in the Shadows: Speculating the Global Imagination.”

February 13th, 5:30 pm ET
Godfrey Kerr Studio at the Lewis Arts complex, Princeton University
CK Williams Reading Series

The C.K. Williams Reading Series, named in honor of the late Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning poet C.K. Williams, who served on Princeton’s Creative Writing faculty for 20 years, showcases seniors in the Program in Creative Writing with established writers as special guests.

February 24, 3:30 pm MT
Denver Center for the Performing Arts
Colorado New Play Summit

Vauhini is a writer. She’s used to being able to describe human experiences in ways that help readers make sense of their world. This is what she does. But she can’t write about her sister’s death – not in a way that captures what she’s really feeling anyway. Sparked by a bit of guilty curiosity, she begins what feels like an illicit experiment with an artificial intelligence program to see what – if anything – she and the algorithm can learn about the very human experience of grief. Part false memory, part uncanny truth, what follows is a series of vignettes that feel at once poetic, bizarrely comical, and vulnerable, all held together by lots of rewrites and a quest for healing. Adapted from Vauhini Vara’s acclaimed essay Ghosts (The Believer, This American Life, and Best American Essays of 2022), Ghost Variations is a wholly unique, theatrical meditation on how we grieve in a technological world.

February 28, 7 pm
Fort Greene
Reading Den Reading Series

Join us for the inaugural reading of the Reading Den series, featuring Andrew Altschul, Anna Qu, and Vauhini Vara.

Feb. 29, 7:30 pm
University Ballroom, Lory Student Center
March 1, 12 pm
Morgan Library, Room 110A
Colorado State University
Creative Writing Reading Series

Vauhini Vara and Kaveh Akbar will read and speak together. Each fall and spring semester at Colorado State University, the Department of English welcomes distinguished literary voices to share their work and to engage with the local community. Visiting writers hold audience question-and-answer sessions, book signings, other outreach activities, and salons. Salons are informal gatherings with visiting authors; they will often bring a writing exercise and there will always be time to ask questions about their practice, publication experience, and anything else on your mind.

September 22, 2 pm MT
Boulder Public Library
Jaipur Literature Festival Colorado

In conversation with Arsen Kashkashian, Vara takes us through the many dimensions of her writing life and the fabric that holds it all together.

September 22, 5 pm MT ($)
Lighthouse Writers Workshop
Lighthouse Writers Workshop

Join the Book Project for a keynote with Vauhini Vara, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel, The Immortal King Rao—as well as the forthcoming short story collection, This Is Salvaged. The talk will be followed by a Q&A and book signing.

September 27, 12:30 PT
Alta Live

In conversation with Alta’s California Book Club editor Anita Felicelli, Vara joins Alta Live to discuss her exciting new book, This is Salvaged, detail her work with The Periplus Collective, an initiative that pairs emerging writers of color with established mentors, and answer your questions.

September 28, 11 am PT
Read With High Country News

Join High Country News for a conversation with Vauhini Vara, author of Pulitzer-finalist The Immortal King Rao, about her latest book, This Is Salvaged.

September 30, 2 pm MT
Decker Public Library
Kundiman West Salon

Join Pulitzer Prize finalist Vauhini Vara and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Rajiv Mohabir for a reading featuring some of Colorado's most exciting Asian American writers. Hosted by Mathangi Subramanian.

October 5, 8 pm CT
Humanities and Social Studies Center
Writers @ Grinnell

Writers @ Grinnell welcomes Beth Nguyen and Vauhini Vara.

October 8, 4 pm MT
Wolverine Farm Publick House
Fort Collins Launch Party

Celebrate the launch of The Immortal King Rao with a community gathering featuring music from The Grahams.

October 12, 4:45 pm MST ($)
Arizona State University
Desert Nights, Rising Stars

Join us for a group reading featuring Matt Bell, Chana Porter, Claire Holroyde, and Vauhini Vara.

October 17, 7:30 pm ET
Campus Center West Addition, SUNY - Albany
New York State Writers Institute

Vauhini Vara is a novelist and journalist who has covered technology for the Wall Street Journal. She was named a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist for her sci-fi/dystopian novel, The Immortal King Rao. Vara is also the author of a new book of short stories, This Is Salvaged.

October 18, 7 pm ET
New York Public LIbrary, Main Branch
LIVE from NYPL

Vara speaks with New York Times bestselling author Leslie Jamison about her new book This is Salvaged, which ponders the question, in a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found?

October 20, 7:30 pm CT
Central Library
Wisconsin Book Festival

In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This Is Salvaged, unmoored in turbulence, are searching fervently for meaning, through one another.

October 23, 5:30 pm PT
Ferry Building Book Passage

Celebrate This is Salvaged with Vauhini Vara, in conversation with R.O. Kwon.

October 24, 6 pm PT
Encina Commons 123
Stanford Center for South Asia

Vauhini Vara ('04), journalist and author of The Immortal King Rao and This Is Salvaged, will join us for a two-hour long in-person event on her genre-bending approach to fiction; her critiques of caste and capitalism; and her experiences in creative writing and journalism at Stanford. The event will discuss the ethics and craft of leveraging genre fiction for social critique in consideration of recent trends in post-colonial and diasporic Indian literature written in English.

October 25, 6:30 pm PT
Margaret Jacks Hall Terrace Room
Stanford Creative Writing Program

The Creative Writing Program is pleased to announce a reading with former Stegner Fellow Edgar Kunz and Stanford alumna Vauhini Vara. This event is open to Stanford affiliates and the general public. Registration is encouraged but not required.

November 2, 7 pm PT
Elliott Bay Book Company

Vauhini Vara, author of the bestselling novel The Immortal King Rao, returns to the store to discuss her story collection This Is Salvaged with local author and friend of the store Sonora Jha.

November 4, TIME TBD
Portland BooK Festival

A reading from This is Salvaged and conversation about stories with a fellow author.

December 7th, 4 pm
Pomerene Hall, Room 160
Ohio State University

When technology companies were starting to develop artificial intelligence that could write, Vauhini Vara was working on her debut novel, The Immortal King Rao, which imagines a future in which those in power deploy AI to remake all aspects of society—criminal justice, education, communication—to suit their interests. Vara got access to an early version of the AI tool that would evolve into ChatGPT and used it to co-write an essay about her grief over her sister’s death. That essay, “Ghosts,” was published in The Believer, adapted for an episode of “This American Life,” and anthologized in Best American Essays 2022. In this talk, Vara will tell the story of her relationship with AI as a writing tool—and why, after some experiments with AI, she has returned to mostly writing the old-fashioned way—as part of an exploration of the opportunities, and risks, that arise when we turn to AI to help us communicate, and what, in an age in which computers can write, it means to be a human writer.