Sanjena Sathian is the author of the critically acclaimed novels GODDESS COMPLEX and GOLD DIGGERS, both published by Penguin Press. Goddess Complex, released in March of 2025, was named a top anticipated book of 2025 by TIME, the Millions, and Electric Lit. It is a New York Times Editor’s Choice, as well as the Lilly’s Library Book Club Pick for March.

Gold Diggers was named a Top 10 Best Book of 2021 by the Washington Post and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. It won the Townsend Prize for Fiction. Sanjena is co-writing the television adaptation with Mindy Kaling’s production company, Kaling International.

Sanjena’s short fiction appears in The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, Conjunctions, One Story, and more. She’s written nonfiction for The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Drift, The Yale Review, and NewYorker.com, among other outlets.

She’s an alumna of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught fiction at Emory University, the University of Iowa, and Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She is currently the Ferrol A. Sams Jr. Distinguished Chair of English at Mercer University. She divides her time between Atlanta and Hong Kong.