Keya Mitra is the author of the manuscript Almost Born, a memoir-in-essays—two of which won major literary competitions this year: the 2024 Missouri Review Perkoff Prize in Nonfiction and the 2024 Prairie Schooner’s Summer Nonfiction Contest. A third essay from this collection was runner-up in Witness Magazine’s 2021 Literary Awards in Nonfiction and published in their Spring 2021 issue. Her short-story collection Bad Babies, a finalist for the prestigious 2024 AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction and 2024 Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize in Short Fiction. Her novel manuscripts include Immigrant Delay Disease, a section of which won the 2021 Tobias Wolff Prize and was published in the Bellingham Review, Human Enough—a finalist for the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction—and Love After Life.
In addition to this year’s honors, her short-story collection has also garnered finalist honors for the Bakeless Prize, Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award, Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and Dzanc Diverse Voices Prize, as well as being a semifinalist for the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her short fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Best New American Voices, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Southwest Review, and many others, earning finalist and semifinalist recognition in numerous prestigious competitions. Her work has received recognition across genres. In 2022, she received the prestigious $10,000 Arnold L. Graves and Lois S. Graves Award in the Humanities for her research in Meghalaya, India, where the novel is set.
Keya holds a PhD and MFA from the University of Houston’s creative writing program and is a Fulbright Scholar. Currently, she is a Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Pacific University, where she has been awarded the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. She directed the creative writing and editing and publishing programs for years and served as Editor-in-Chief of the internationally distributed literary magazine, Silk Road Review: A Literary Crossroads.
“This essay is a beautiful, brilliantly moving work ... When I finished, I immediately returned to the beginning to read it again. I came away wanting to stay with this writer, in this world; to walk the rest of the way with her.”
“[Her work is] sad and sweet, powerful and disturbing, light as a feather in its deftness, and deeply moving in its human wisdom. What a wonderful discovery.”
— David Lynn, Former Editor-in-Chief of The Kenyon Review
Keya is a frequent speaker and panelist at the Association of Writers and Writing Program conferences and other events nationwide including the Harlem First Person Plural Reading Series, Witness Magazine readings, and Pacific University’s commencement. If you would like to book Keya or collaborate with her on an upcoming presentation, please reach out directly.
