Shome Dasgupta

About

Shome Dasgupta is the author of The Seagull And The Urn (HarperCollins India), Tentacles Numbing (Thirty West Publishing House), Histories Of Memories (Belle Point Press), Atchafalaya Darling: Stories (Belle Point Press), The Muu-Antiques (Malarkey Books), Cirrus Stratus (Spuyten Duyvil), Anklet And Other Stories (Golden Antelope Press), Pretend I Am Someone You Like (Livingston Press), Spectacles (Word West Press), Mute (Tolsun Books), i am here And You Are Gone which won the 2010 OW Press Contest, and a poetry collection, Iron Oxide (Assure Press).

Shome received an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University-Los Angeles. His fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, American Book Review, New Orleans Review, Arkansas Review, New Delta Review, Necessary Fiction, Louisiana Literature, Jabberwock Review, Parentheses Journal, Magma Poetry, and elsewhere. His fiction and poetry have been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2019 (Sonder Press), Best Small Fictions 2021 (Sonder Press), Best Small Fictions 2023 (Alternating Current Press), The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing (&Now Books), and Poetic Voices Without Borders 2 (Gival Press). His work has been featured as a storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Story, and his stories and poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best Of The Net, Best Microfiction, and the Orison Anthology.

He is the series editor of the Wigleaf Top 50. He took part in the Innovative Fiction panel, as a featured author, at the Louisiana Book Festival. He lives in Lafayette, LA and can be found at @laughingyeti.

He is represented by Teffanie Thompson of Falkin Literary.

Books

Atchafalaya Darling

“There’s so much tenderness in these stories, all wrapped in vibrantly bubbling scenes and conversations. Dasgupta cares about all these characters and it shows all over the pages and pulls a reader in.”

—Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and The Butterfly Lampshade

In Shome Dasgupta’s latest collection, the dream-like world of South Louisiana shimmers through one of its most original voices. Atchafalaya Darling contains local music scenes, crumbling homes, and creature comforts amid the convergence of wild hopes and rural spaces. Each story navigates the nature of memory, lost or found, sprinkled like spice into the red of the crawfish. While this collection often portrays immense grief—whether from hurricane winds or splintered dreams—each character clings to a love for place and the people who make it home. Atchafalaya Darling is an homage to Cajun culture, providing ten glimpses into this region like a series of faded Polaroid pictures held under the sun. (Belle Point Press, 2024)

Histories of Memories

This hybrid collection of short prose pieces and Elliott Smith-inspired illustrations carries readers along a thin thread of memory—whether their own or the author’s past, it becomes difficult to say. Shome Dasgupta’s latest book recalls days at the movies, family heartache, and other personal experiences through soundtracks, daydreams, and attempts to remember what lingers from the spectrums of time. Whether pondering the vulnerability of a turtle or reflecting on his own fragilities, Dasgupta’s dreamy prose lets us into a series of fragments that depict a world broken yet beautiful. Histories of Memories is a testament to the burdens as well as the delights of our own narratives—how they keep us tied to each other whether we realize it or not. (Belle Point Press, 2023)

The Muu-Antiques

Percy Winks needed a job and a place to stay. Macy Thorpewaite gave him an adventure. The Muu-Antiques has it all. Intrigue. True love. Muumuus. It’s a mystery and a romance and a coming-of-age novel—and it might be the sweetest book ever written. (Malarkey Books, 2023)

Tentacles Numbing

Tentacles Numbing takes place in Seattle where two Bengali brothers struggle to make it through each day as they cope with loss and loneliness. Ravi lives in an isolated world where he constantly dreams of being hanged while his older brother, Vavi, lives in his own version of reality on the streets with the hopes of turning Tentacles, Numbing—his screenplay—into a movie. When Ravi meets Brandi, his life is once again turned around, and a triangle is formed between the three as they search for love and comfort. While Vavi and Brandi are progressing, Ravi finds himself confused as to what is real and what is just a dream. (Thirty West Publishing House, 2022)

Cirrus Stratus

Cirrus Stratus tells the mythic story of love and rage and how a once prominent family deteriorated while living in the pangful city of Dormier. Misguided by desire, every turn spins itself frustratingly into a quagmire. Both love story as well as family saga—where memories collide amidst destruction—the novel journeys into human spirit through the tinted glass of a tainted, yet magical, realism. (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2022)

Spectacles

“When I reached the end of Spectacles, I immediately went back to the beginning to read it again. This is truly a book like no other. The innovative format and brutally honest revelations compel us as readers to face the worst thing of all, ourselves. With raw and secret thoughts on display, Dasgupta’s words beg the question, when you look at your reflection, do you like what you see? If our loved ones could read our minds, and our darkest thoughts were revealed, would they still love us? And would we love ourselves? The private shame and self-loathing that defines in some part what it is to be human teaches us that real love is many things, least of all perfect. There is a wisdom and an acceptance of a darker side running through the undercurrent of Dasgupta’s prose, which makes us realize that we cannot be good unless we grapple with our demons. Stunning!” (Word West, 2021)

Iron Oxide

Iron Oxide attempts to explore the natural world as it relates to one’s psyche—a mind in search of hope and solace through the various landscapes of solitude. (Assure Press, 2021)

Pretend I Am Someone You Like

Set in present day rural Louisiana, Mutty takes care of his younger cousin, Barn, who has not spoken since the day his father was arrested. Pepper, Mutty’s love interest, is haunted by a violent past, and she’s trying to escape it and start a new life. Her relationship with Mutty grows throughout the story as they learn more about each other, spiritually and physically, and Barn becomes a constant symbol of love for the two, who are trying to find a spark in their respective lives. Pepper’s past catches up with her, and Mutty, Barn, Ma, and Pepper are trying to deal with a mysterious man and his attempts at thievery and kidnapping in their own little world full of mud, hay, and crawfish. (Livingston Press, 2020)

Mute

In this collection of short stories and other miscellaneous moments, Shome Dasgupta creates a world that is somehow both clearly ours as well as barely recognizable. Dasgupta, the author of The Seagull And The Urn (Harper Collins India), weaves sophistication into pop surrealism, stripping away the meaningless noise that surrounds us and turning up the volume on our sticky yet ever-changing, beautifully disastrous lives. With Dasgupta as our guide, we are able to transcend time, and even verb tense, creeping in and out of postmodern fairytales gone awry. We examine our most awkward high school gymnasium memories and explore, with an unusual objectivity, how one’s dream date can drift away into another’s nightmare. It’s possible that Mute offers more questions than answers, uncertainties that are more satiating than any one-size-fits-all explanation could ever present. (Tolsun Books, 2018)

Anklet And Other Stories

Shome Dasgupta is an American author of Bengali descent who explores his South Asian roots in this series of fourteen stories, which are mostly set in modern day Kolkata. With hints of magical realism, each story reflects the surrealistic dimensions of a variety of characters visiting India and the engagements with the people they meet there. (Golden Antelope Press, 2017)

The Seagull And The Urn

March is born in April, just as the sun is setting. A singing baby who can’t sleep, she sets Kolkaper on edge. The Town Council orders the Scientists to take her away and study her, maybe send her to the Cave Forest, a place for freaks like her. Acting quickly, March’s parents and their friends, the Medallions, thwart those plans, sending the baby away to the distant town of Koofay. But March’s destiny is tied to that of Kolkaper’s. She must return to save the city from itself. An enchanting fable about love and faith and accepting the odd ones among us. (HarperCollins India, 2013)

i am here And You Are Gone

Winner of the 2010 Outsider Writers Press Fiction Contest

Shome Dasgupta’s debut maps the lifelong bond between Mary and Jonas, childhood friends perpetually approaching something more. Dasgupta weaves their world in elegant simplicity, stripping imagery and prose to an essential core while never devaluing the sentiment behind it. i am here And You Are Gone is a love story that elevates love and friendship above romanticized ideals, combining prosaic, poetic, and illustrative elements to describe a relationship in terms rarely explored in contemporary fiction. (Outsider Writers Press, 2010)