Born with a distinctive birthmark in the center of her forehead and raised in a mostly white suburb in Texas—Keya weathered racism as a kid. But the same skin that marked her for bullying cast her for admiration on family trips to India where strangers stopped her on the street to celebrate her “auspicious third eye.”

The experience inspired an exploration of race and culture, intergenerational bonds between Indian and Indian-American women, and empathy that has animated much of her writing and professional career.

These days, she’s an award-winning Professor of creative writing and literature at Pacific University. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at Gonzaga University and earned both her PhD and MFA from the University of Houston’s creative writing program. Keya was also a 2008 Fulbright Scholar in creative writing, exploring her family’s history in India and volunteering at schools in Kolkata, Delhi, and Bangalore.

In addition to currently directing the creative writing and editing and publishing programs at Pacific University and editing the internationally distributed- literary magazine Silk Road Review, Keya also oversees the Visiting Writers Series. She has brought a number of acclaimed authors to campus, including Pulitzer-winning poet Dr. Jericho Brown, acclaimed Indian-American Novelist and American Book Award Winner Dr. Chitra Divakaruni, and PEN/Faulkner finalist Sunil Yapa.

Keya’s novels and short stories voyage through issues of protest and joy, immigration and family trauma, romance and redemption. Her plots feel both surprising and inevitable. They evade expectation through humor, depth, and sleight of hand.

There are no side characters in her work. Not a soul who exists solely to further someone else’s story. Her empathy raises the stakes. You root for every character with the full knowledge that your hopes are conflicting. You are setting up your own heart for the fall. But when the let down comes, Keya is kind enough to make it feel like a release.

“Fell off a mountain” isn’t a cutesy turn of phrase. It’s a harrowing story of loss, head trauma, and spiritual endurance. (See South on Sisters, 2021 Witness Magazine Literary Awards Runner-Up.) During her recovery, her interest in hiking became a way of life. She practices gratitude on her long daily walks through the hills around Portland, OR. Two years after a brain operation for Chiari Malformation, Keya hiked 400 miles of Spain’s Camino de Santiago and returned in the summer of 2022 to hike all 500 miles, with the support of an Elise Elliott grant, and work on Reborn at the End of the World: A Communal Memoir, her book-length memoir about chronic illness, individual and collective trauma, movement therapy, and power of communal healing. In 2023, she completed her third Camino de Santiago—this time hiking the Camino de Santiago de la Costa in Portugal (The Portuguese Litoral Route). She even returned to conquer the scene of the accident, the rugged, 10k-foot summit of South Sisters Mountain—twice.

• Finalist, PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (Novel, Human Enough)

• Winner, Tobias Wolff Award for fiction (for her story “Immigration Delay Disease”

• Winner of a 2022 Arnold L. Graves and Lois S. Graves Award in the Humanities.

• Runner-up, Witness Magazine’s Literary Awards in Nonfiction

• Finalist, Indiana Review Prize

• Finalist, Iowa Review Prize

• Finalist, Disquiet Literary Prize

• Shortlist Honors for Dzanc Books’ Diverse Voices Prize (for Short-Story Collection)

• Silver, The Side Show awards (for Edison Street Mural)

• President’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Pacific University

• Recognized in Best New American Voices 2017 for short story “My Child of Stone” under “Other Distinguished Stories of 2017”    

• Finalist, Flannery O’Connor Prize in Short Fiction Book Award  

• Finalist, Bakeless Prize in Short Fiction 

• Semifinalist, Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest

• Semifinalist, Book Award, Iowa Short Fiction Award

• Fulbright Scholar to India: Research Grant

• Nominated for Pushcart Prize in Fiction

• Finalist, Book Award, Mary McCarthy Prize in Fiction

• Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Work-study Tuition Scholarship

• Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Competition Honorable Mention in Fiction

• Barthelme Memorial Fellowship in Fiction

• Alternate for Michener Fellowship

• C. Glen Cambor/Inprint Fellowship

Fiction

• Bellingham Review, “Immigrant Delay Disease”(Forthcoming Spring 2022) ,

• Moss  “The Thin Place” (Spring 2018)

• The Bennington Review “My Child of Stone” (Fall/Winter 2016)

• The Kenyon Review “The Sacred Gifts of Cows and Cheetahs” (Winter 2015)

• Aster(ix) “Eternal Pursuit of the Whale’s Song” (Summer 2016) 

• Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies “The Perfect Eggplant” (Fall 2015)

• Arts & Letters “Majormama” (Spring 2015)

• Bellevue Literary Review Through NYU’s Department of Medicine “The Magnificent Purr” (Fall 2014)

• Southwest Review “Antiques Anonymous” (Summer 2014)

• Slush Pile  “The Unmourned” (Summer 2014)

• The Kenyon Review’s Weekend Reads  Reprint of “A Family Matter” from 2011 print edition (2014)

• The Kenyon Review “A Family Matter” (Fall 2011)

• Best New American Voices 2007 “Pompeii Recreated”

• Torpedo “A Man of Many Possibilities” (2008)

• Event “Operation Saving Suma” (2006)

• Fourteen Hills “An Elegy to Road Kill” (2006)

• Confrontation “The Outage” (2006)

• Ontario Review “Pompeii Recreated”  (2005)

• Orchid “Tips on Pulling off the Graceful Death”  (2005)

Non-fiction

• Witness Magazine “South on Sisters” (Spring 2021)

• The Afghan Women’s Project Newsletter  “AWWP and the Power of One Woman’s Voice”  

• Charter Magazine “A Classless Haven”

• Unity Multicultural Education Center Newsletter “A Subtle but Critical Diversity”

• Writers in the Schools Newsletter “A Child’s Voice in India”

• American Book Review Review: Christina Milletti’s “The Religious and Other Fictions”

• American Book Review  Review: Haruki Murakami’s “After Dark”

• Gulf Coast“This is Where I Falter, This is Where I Lose Myself.”

Poetry

• Travel Portland: Portland as Poetry Zine “Lower MacLeay Trail”

Editorial Work

• Editor-in-Chief, Silk Road Review: A Literary Crossroads                                                                                           

  Issue #22

• Editor-in-Chief, Silk Road Review: A Literary Crossroads                                                                                           

  Issue #21

• Editor-in-Chief, Silk Road Review: A Literary Crossroads                                                                                           

  Issue #19: UNCLAIMED

• Editor-in-Chief, Silk Road Review: A Literary Crossroads                                                                                           

  Issue #18: THE ARCHITECTURE OF IDENTITY

• Editor-in-Chief, Silk Road Review: A Literary Crossroads                                                                                           

  Issue #17: DISPLACED: REDEFINING HOME (with Kathlene Postma)

• Co-Editor-in-Chief, Silk Road Review: A Literary Crossroads

  Issue #14: Voices on Asia (with Dr. Kathlene Postma, founder of Silk Road Review).

• Editor-in-Chief, Pacific’s Literature for Undergraduate Magazines, Spring 2016 and 2017

Presentations, Readings, and Panels

• “Immigrant Delay Disease”: Invited Reading. Harlem First Person Plural Reading Series. (Virtual). March         

                 2021.  

• “Women in Open Spaces: Life after the (Un)remarkable Journey.” Association of Writers and Writing 

  Programs (AWP) Conference, San Antonio, Texas, March 2020. Panelist. 

• “Diverse Voices, United Purpose: The Literary Journal in Undergraduate Creative Writing Programs.” 

  Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, Tampa, Florida, March 2018.  

  Moderator, Organizer, and Panelist. 

• “Fiction Craft Talks: Using The Gifts of the Region in an Era of Modernization.” Association of Writers 

                and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, Seattle, Washington, February 2014. Moderator, 

                Organizer, and Panelist. 

• “Reports and Readings from The Afghan Women’s Project.” Association of Writers 

                and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, Seattle, Washington, February 2014. Solicited Reader. 

• “The Magnificent Purr”: A Reading. Burnt Tongue Reading Series, Portland, Oregon, May 2014. 

• “First Person Plural Reading.” Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, Boston, 

  Massachusetts, March 2013.

• “Landing the Tenure-Track Job Without a Book: What to Expect on the Job Market.” Association of 

  Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, March 2013. 

• “Teaching Creative Writing in High Schools: Service Learning.” Individual Presentation/Workshop.  

  Gonzaga University, Spokane WA, January 2013. 

• “’I Am’: Constructing Poetry, Lyrics, and Narratives about Identity.” (With Joe Albert). Gonzaga 

  University BRIDGE Session, Spokane, WA, August 2012. 

• Featured Reading from Ghost Weddings. Boldface Conference for Writers in Houston, TX, May 2012. 

• “From the Ordinary to the Extraordinary: Transgressing Boundaries in Fiction.” Craft Talk at the Boldface 

  Conference for Writers in Houston, TX, May 2012. 

• “Launching a Career as a Writer.” Panel Presentation at the Boldface Conference for Writers in Houston, 

  TX, May 2012.