Raghav Rao - "Missy" - Vu Tran
Raghav Rao will discuss his new book Missy: A Novel. He will be joined in conversation by Vu Tran. A Q&A and book signing will follow the discussion.
At the Co-op
About the Book: A remarkable young woman flees India to chase the dream of self-reinvention in America
The orphaned girls of St. Ursula’s convent are destined to be nuns or servants, but seventeen-year-old Savi dreams of escape. She is chosen to work as a governess for the wealthy Nandiyar family at their country estate in Tamil Nadu, where she falls for a lively and carefree apprentice sculptor. After the violent and horrific events of a single night, they are forced to flee, leaving their homeland forever in the rearview.
Decades later, Savi has become known to all as “Missy” and runs a successful driving school in Chicago. She is a pillar of the South Asian community and the mother of two brilliant, stubborn young women, Mansi and Shilpa. But when Varun, a charming doctor with mysterious connections to her past, enters their lives, a chain of events is set off that puts Missy’s carefully constructed world in jeopardy. Can Missy outrun her secrets? And, if she is forced to face them, what will become of those she loves?
About the Author: Raghav Rao is the author of MISSY (Penguin Random House - Hera Books, UK & Commonwealth, Penguin Random House - Vintage Books, India, and Triquarterly Books, Northwestern University Press, North America). He teaches Creative Writing at The University of Chicago. He grew up in Southern India, Los Angeles, and London. He enjoys bird-watching, playing squash, and biking the lakefront trail. You can read his newsletter on information saturation at raghavrao.substack.com or follow him on Instagram at @raghavrao_writes.
About the Interlocutor: Vu Tran is the author of Dragonfish—a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of the Year—as well as a forthcoming novel, Your Origins. His writing has also appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, the Best American Mystery Stories, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly, and McSweeney’s. Born in Vietnam and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and is also the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the NEA, MacDowell, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, and Sewanee. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, where he is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts.
Related Titles
A remarkable young woman flees India to chase the dream of self-reinvention in America
The orphaned girls of St. Ursula's convent are destined to be nuns or servants, but seventeen-year-old Savi dreams of escape. She is chosen to work as a governess for the wealthy Nandiyar family...