Sejal Shah

Sejal Shah is a writer, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Her debut story collection, How to Make Your Mother Cry: fictions, is being published by West Virginia University Press. Sejal is also the author of the award-winning essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance (University of Georgia Press), chosen as a New York Times Sunday recommendation and NPR best book of 2020 and included on over thirty most-anticipated or best of lists in the Los Angeles Times, Electric Literature, The Millions, Ms. Magazine, The Rumpus, and Self. Her writing has appeared in Conjunctions, Guernica, The Guardian, and Lit Hub, among others. This Is One Way to Dance was a finalist for the CLMP Firecracker Award in nonfiction and received the Nautilus Books for a Better World Gold Award in Lyric Prose. Sejal’s groundbreaking Kenyon Review essay on invisible disability and neurodiversity, “Even If You Can’t See It,” was named a Longreads Editors’ Pick. She is the recipient of fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, Kundiman, Millay Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was named a 2021 influential AAPI Leader by Good Morning America and ABC News. The daughter of immigrants from Kenya and India, Sejal lives in Rochester, New York. You can find her online at sejal-shah.com and on Instagram and X @sejalshahwrites.