Publicity Contact: Ananya Mathur, amathur@penguinrandomhouse.in
Publication date: March 8, 2021 | Hardcover
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Sayantani Dasgupta's stories are bright, beautiful shards of glass. These aren't all "nice" women-but they're
real, and honest, and vulnerable, and you come away feeling for them as you would if you were to know them in real life.
~ JANICE PARIAT
This book mercilessly annihilates the idea of imaginary, illusive, and perfect woman, and resurrects a species of unconventional women.
~ K. R. Meera
BOOK SUMMARY
Women Who Misbehave, much like the women within its pages, contains multitudes and contradictions—it is imaginative and real, unsettling and heartening, funny and poignant, dark and brimming with light.
At a party to celebrate her friend’s wedding anniversary, a young woman spills a dangerous secret. A group of girls mourns the loss of their strange, mysterious neighbour. A dutiful daughter seeks to impress her father even as she escapes his reach. A wife weighs the odds of staying in her marriage when both her reality and the alternative are equally frightening. An aunt comes to terms with an impulsive mistake committed decades ago.
In this wildly original and hauntingly subversive collection of short stories, Sayantani Dasgupta brings to life ten unforgettable women and their quest for agency. They are violent and nurturing, sacred and profane. They are friends, lovers, wives, sisters, and mothers. Unapologetic and real, they embrace the entire range of the human experience, from the sweetest of loves and sacrifices to the most horrific of crimes.
AUTHOR BIO
An alumna of St. Stephen’s College and JNU, Sayantani Dasgupta received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is the author of Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, & the In-Between—a Finalist for the Foreword Indies Awards for Creative Nonfiction—and the chapbook The House of Nails: Memories of a New Delhi Childhood. Her writing has appeared in over 50 literary journals and magazines, including, The Hindu, The Rumpus, Scroll, Economic & Political Weekly, IIC Quarterly, Chicago Quarterly Review, and others. She has been awarded a Centrum Foundation Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize Special Mention. Besides the US, she has taught creative writing in India, Italy, and Mexico. Sayantani is also the winner of Season 3 of Write India, adjudged by the novelist Kavita Kane, and organized by the books division of The Times of India. Follow her on Twitter at @sayan10e
LINKS
The Rumpus Interview by Dr. Madhushree Ghosh
The Times of India: Short Stories by Indian Authors to Read in 2021
SheThePeople: “I Write To Invent, To Create, But I Also Write So I Can Understand Myself”
The Read it Right Interview by Subh Dasgupta
Scroll: an excerpt from Women Who Misbehave
YourStory Interview
Eshe magazine interview
Panel Discussion on How Diary Writing & Journaling Shapes You As a Writer for SheThePeople’s Women Writers’ Fest