Nandita Shankar Naik

Hi there! I’m a writer living in San Francisco.

Fiction

• “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Fossil” (Adroit Prize for Prose, 2022)
• “Ashes,” Four Way Review (nominated for Best of the Net)
• “Ocean Graves,” Black Warrior Review (print)
• “Kali,” Waxwing

Poetry

• “Hibernation,” Rising Phoenix Review (nominated for Best of the Net)
• “Cagelife,” Rising Phoenix Review
• “Burn,” Blue Marble Review
• “Drowning,” Crashtest
• “Ageless,” Polyphony HS (print)
• “My Father, The Tenor,” National Poetry Quarterly
• “For Everest,” The Daphne Review

Awards

• Stanford Bocock/Guerard Fiction Prize, 2nd Place
• Adroit Prize for Prose, 2022
• Best of the Net Nominee, 2x
• Foyle Young Poets, Commended
• American High School Poets National Winner and $100 Editor’s Choice Award
• Keats-Shelley Young Romantics Poetry Prize Finalist
• Poetry Matters Prize Finalist

Readings

• Four Way Review 10-Year Anniversary Reading, Dec 16, 2022
• Adroit Journal Issue 42 Reading, Aug 16, 2022

“‘When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Fossil’ is a wonderfully voice-driven short story with an inventive premise and deep love of human life and the natural world. Set against the blazing effects of climate change, “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Fossil” manages to address some of the most pressing planetary concerns of our time while closely and charmingly exploring adolescence, tedium, the life of work, and what intimacy means in the face of looming disaster. I adored this story and these characters.”

— Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of Sabrina & Corina and Woman of Light