Shastri Akella is a South Asian writer represented by Chris Clemans (Janklow & Nesbit) and his first novel,The Sea Elephants, is forthcoming from Flatiron Books (2023). He is a 2021-2022 writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a 2022 fellow of the Oak Springs Garden Foundation fellowship. He previously worked for a street theater troupe and Google. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he also earned a PhD. in Comparative Literature. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Guernica, CRAFT, The Master’s Review, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, PANK, The Common, and World Literature Review, among other places.
