Bio
Sejal Shah is a writer whose work crosses genres and disciplines. She is the author of the debut short story collection How to Make Your Mother Cry: Fictions (West Virginia University Press, 2024). She is also the author of the award-winning debut essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance, an NPR Best Book of 2020. Her stories and essays have appeared widely in print and online—including Brevity, the Guardian, Conjunctions, the Kenyon Review, Lit Hub, Longreads and The Margins, among others.
Sejal is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in fiction and residencies or fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, Kundiman, Millay Arts, and VCCA. In 2021, she was named an influential AAPI Leader by Good Morning America and ABC News. The daughter of Gujarati parents who immigrated to the United States from India and Kenya, Sejal lives in Rochester, New York.
Short Bio: Sejal Shah is the author of the debut short story collection How to Make Your Mother Cry: Fictions and the award-winning debut essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance, an NPR Best Book of 2020. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Conjunctions, the Guardian, the Kenyon Review, and Literary Hub, among others. In 2021, she was named an influential AAPI Leader by Good Morning America and ABC News. Sejal lives in Rochester, New York.
Photo credit: Rajesh Singaravelu
Speaking
Sejal Shah is the author of the debut essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance (University of Georgia Press,). Her work explores race, place, invisible disability, neurodiversity, and South Asian American identity.
She has presented her work on invisible disability and neurodiversity as an invited keynote speaker at conferences at Princeton University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Sejal holds a BA in English from Wellesley College and an MFA in English / Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has taught creative writing at the University of Rochester, Mount Holyoke College, Marymount Manhattan College (New York City), and Luther College (Iowa)