Pronunciation: SUN-jun-ah SUH-thee-an *or see: handy Bollywood song

Sanjena Sathian is the author of the critically acclaimed novels GODDESS COMPLEX and GOLD DIGGERS, both published by Penguin Press. Goddess Complex was a New Yorker Best Book of 2025 and a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Gold Diggers was a Washington Post Top 10 Best Book of 2021, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and won the Townsend Prize for Fiction.

Sanjena’s short fiction appears in The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, Conjunctions, One Story, Gulf Coast and more. She’s written nonfiction for New York Magazine, The Drift, The Yale Review, and The New York Times, among other outlets. She also writes for screen. Her work has received support from the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Clarion Foundation, Hedgebrook, the Hawthornden Foundation, and the Sally and Don Lucas Artist in Residency Program at Montalvo Arts Center.

She is currently a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong and has previously taught at Emory University, Mercer University, the University of Iowa, and Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand. She offers online writing courses through the Banyan Writers’ Workshop.