Selected Press
She Wrote a Dystopian Novel. Now Her Fiction Is Crossing Into Reality.
In Vauhini Vara’s debut novel, a boy from rural India becomes a tech mogul in a world consumed by Big Tech. What seemed impossible, she said, has become real, in life and in technology.
— Alisha Haridasani Gupta, The New York Times, April 2022
Debutiful podcast: Vauhini Vara’s The Immortal King Rao
Vauhini Vara, the author of The Immortal King Rao, has previously been a technology reporter at the Wall Street Journal and the business editor for The New Yorker. She joined the podcast to talk about genre, how she approaches early reader feedback, good fiction, and everything in between.
— Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful podcast, May 2022
Vauhini Vara on Grounding Fiction with Cultural Touchstones
This week on The Maris Review, Vauhini Vara joins Maris Kreizman to discuss her debut novel, The Immortal King Rao, out now from W.W. Norton & Company.
— Maris Kreizman, The Maris Review podcast, May 2022
How Reporting on Mark Zuckerberg Inspired a New Novel
Vauhini Vara explains how her previous reporting on tech giants and their CEOs inspired her novel The Immortal King Rao.
— Hari Sreenivasan, Amanpour & Co., June 2022
The World: Vauhini Vara’s The Immortal King Rao
The fictional character King Rao is a composite character of various high-tech entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley (Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, etc.). But King Rao is also a Dalit, a member of the so-called "untouchable" caste in India. His innovations are both harmful and helpful to the planet. King Rao the central figure in the new dystopian novel The Immortal King Rao by writer Vauhini Vara. She speaks to host Marco Werman.
— Marco Werman, The World, June 2022
Between the Covers: Vauhini Vara’s The Immortal King Rao
The Immortal King Rao is somehow three narratives in one, a historical novel set within a Dalit community in 1950s India, a near-future tech dystopia on the islands of the Puget Sound near Seattle, and an immigration story from the former to the latter. As a technology reporter herself, Vauhini Vara is interested in artificial intelligence in relation to writing and narrative, and she has found an ingenious tech-assisted point of view to tell this story of India and the United States, of caste and capitalism, of corporate governance and the anarchist resistance to it, in the most novel of ways.
— David Naimon, Between the Covers podcast, July 2022
What Writers Gain From Mentorship
A conversation with Vauhini Vara about mentoring writers of color and expanding access to literary spaces.
— Nicole Chung, The Atlantic, September 2023
Otherppl podcast No. 868: Vauhini Vara
Vauhini Vara is the author of the story collection This is Salvaged, available from W.W. Norton & Co. Vara has been a reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and the New York Times Magazine, and is the prize-winning author of the novel The Immortal King Rao, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.
— Brad Listi, Otherppl podcast, September 2023
Vauhini Vara’s This is Salvaged explores womanhood, art as social activism
Vauhini Vara’s debut novel The Immortal King Rao wove climate change, capitalism, and genetic manipulation into a sweeping family saga. The book is a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year. Her follow-up book, however, goes in a much more intimate direction; Vara’s beautiful new collection of short stories takes us into the lives of women and girls, who often struggle to connect and communicate.
— Deepa Fernandes, NPR’s Here and Now, October 2023
Best of the Mountain West: Vauhini Vara
As her own star rises—including the publication of her highly anticipated short story collection This Is Salvaged in September—Vara is elevating other writers of color as a mentor with Denver’s Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Book Project and Periplus, a national writers’ community.
— Daliah Singer, 5280 Magazine, December 2023
Past Press
A Short Story Collection Based on Our News-Heavy Times
In a profile of the Chronicles of Now, a new literary journal, Hilary Moss mentions the short story “Unknown Unknowns” calling it an “exploration of what we believe in.” —The New York Times, May 2020
A Conversation with Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow Vauhini Vara
Talking with the writer Anna Bruno about my work and the Rona Jaffe Foundation’s support of it. —Iowa Writers Workshop, July 2015
And Quiet Flow the Letters
A conversation with the journal of the Telugu Association of North America about my Telugu background and my writing career. —TANA Patrika, March 2015
Q. & A. With New Book Project Mentor Vauhini Vara
A conversation with the writer Kate Christensen about my writing and career. —Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop, December 2019
Zyzzyva Interview Series: Vauhini Vara
A conversation with Zyzzyva Managing Editor Oscar Villalon about my story “We Were Here” and my work as a business journalist. —Zyzzyva, July 2015
NewYorker.com Hires Business Editor
An article by Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke about my joining the website of the New Yorker as its business editor. —The New York Observer, July 2013