Vauhini Vara

Vauhini Vara is a contributing editor at the Fuller Project. Her journalism and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and other publications, and her short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, and elsewhere. She began her career as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, then launched the business section of the New Yorker’s website and became its editor, and later a contributing writer. She has also worked as an editor for the website of the Atlantic and has been a staff writer for the California Sunday Magazine. She has won an O. Henry Award for her fiction, along with other honors from the International Journalists’ Programmes, the Asian American Journalists Association, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and others. W.W. Norton will publish her debut novel, The Immortal King Rao, in 2021, followed by her story collection, This is Salvaged. 

What Vauhini looks for in a Book Project mentee: I'm in search of mentees with devotion to their craft and a willingness to work relentlessly at it. I have written, taught, and edited both fiction and nonfiction, including journalism; I have the most experience with forms that would be considered "literary," but I'm interested in all kinds of writing (and am working on a novel with speculative elements). I seek diversity in the writers I mentor. For my 2020-22 cohort, I am particularly interested in mentoring writers at work on nonfiction books, including journalism.