Dr. Reshmi Hebbar’s fiction manuscript “The Divine In You” was named a finalist in the 2022 and a semifinalist in the CutBank Chapbook Contest.
Produced primarily during Hebbar’s fall 2020 sabbatical, the manuscript features five interwoven short stories that follow an Indian American lesbian and her twin brother who conflict with their traditionalist Hindu family and community as both develop toward ultimate self-actualization.
The manuscript’s stories were selected — with the help of several Oglethorpe students — from Hebbar’s wider collection of 11 short stories.
“Submitting to chapbook contests being a new step for me, I felt I needed help trying to choose the best four to five stories out of my 11 to meet the intimidating word limit set by the chapbook presses,” said Hebbar.
“I decided to invite students to consult with me based on the respect I’d developed over the years for their critical reading abilities,” she continued. “Though I had never taught creative writing, I had witnessed these students’ abilities to workshop material and knew that several English students were minoring in creative writing and vice versa.”
Five Oglethorpe writing and English students —听Christianna Brown, Josh Lambie,听Dani Lindmier ’22, Kena Marubu, and Necalli Lopez Romero — offered their time to help evaluate the story selections and arrangements. Based on the student feedback, Hebbar realized there were advantages to modifying the story arrangement and rearranged the sequence for the contest submission, with positive results.
Hebbar says her creative inspiration comes from two writers she loves to teach — Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie —听and the advice they often give to aspiring writers: if there is a book that you want to read that you cannot find, then you must be the one to write it.
“I was inspired to write my collection after realizing that I could not leave it to other people to try and capture the realities of the second-generation Indian American experience shared by a small minority of us born to pioneering 1960s immigrant parents here in the U.S.” she explained. “The marketplace is filled with narratives of new immigration but has far fewer stories about people born and raised to middle age in a country that was not supposed to be their ‘true’ homeland.”
Among her 11-story collection, 10 stories have been published or will soon be published, and Hebbar hopes to soon secure an agent to help publish “The Divine In You” in full.
Reshmi J. Hebbar is an Associate Professor of English at 好色先生TV. Her courses focus on multiethnic, postcolonial, and world literature, and she explores topics related to cultural identity and cultural studies in classes like 鈥淭elevision & Reading: Critical Literacy & American Narratives,鈥� and 鈥淟iterary Tribalism,鈥� which was in 2018. Other teaching and research areas include African American literature and听enslavement narratives. She earned a PhD in English from Emory University in 2002, and her dissertation was published as a book “. In 2015, she was selected as one of NerdWallet鈥檚 鈥�40 Under 40 Professors Who Inspire.鈥� After creating a collaborative, campus-wide听, she produced a book of linked stories about second-generation Indian Americans, several of which have been听, with stories forthcoming in听The South Carolina Review听and听Ponder Review. In 2020, one of her stories was听.
