The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2024 Spring Literature Grant to Emma Deshpande for her novel “Anant”.

Emma Deshpande writes short fiction and is currently at work on two novels. She was a finalist in the 2022 Simon and Schuster BOOKS LIKE US First Novel Contest and was longlisted for the 2022 Granum Foundation Prize. Her short fiction has recently appeared in On the Run, Passengers Journal, and the 2020 anthology More Time. She was shortlisted for the 53rd Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest in 2020 and won the University College London Publishers' Prize in 2018.

Emma holds an MFA in Fiction from New York University’s Low-Residency Writers Workshop in Paris. She has attended workshops at and received support from Tin House, Aspen Words, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Vermont Studio Center. She lived in London for four years and currently lives in New York City. She is represented by Maria Whelan at Inkwell Management.

Anant is loosely inspired by the life experiences of Emma’s paternal grandfather, who served in the Royal Air Force as a medical officer after immigrating to England from India in the 1950s. Following three characters from the 1940s through the 1960s in India and England, this novel examines society in post-Partition India and interactions between marginalized groups in England during and after World War Two.

Please visit Emma’s Instagram or website for more information.