Author: Varun Gauri in Conversation with Laura Spence-Ash

The author, an economist and lecturer at Princeton University, discusses his award-winning debut novel "For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus" with Laura Spence-Ash.

About the Novel (from the publisher): 

For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus, the winner of the 2024 Carol Trawick Fiction Prize, is a comedy of manners about immigration and assimilation. Disillusioned with modern romance, globe-trotting Meena tries an arranged marriage with Avi, an aspiring politician in Ohio. But when Avi's political opponent launches racist attacks, Meena and Avi are forced to defend their immigrant community, which narrowly understands its own traditions, and protect their increasingly shaky relationship. This is an intimate, funny, and heartbreaking novel about small-town America and the politics of marriage.

About the Speakers: 
Varun Gauri was born in India and raised in the American Midwest. After studying philosophy in college and public policy in graduate school, he worked for more than two decades on global poverty and human rights, publishing academic articles and books on development economics and behavioral economics. He now teaches at Princeton University and lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland. His short fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and recognized in Best American Nonrequired Reading. He was a Summer Writer-in-Residence at Washington, DC’s The Inner Loop. For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus is his first novel.

Laura Spence-Ash’s fiction has appeared in One Story, New England Review, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. Her critical essays and book reviews appear regularly in the Ploughshares blog. She received her MFA in fiction from Rutgers–Newark, and she lives in New Jersey.

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