First Draft: A Literary Social with Talia Lakshmi Kolluri

Community, craft, and rapid-fire creativity meet at our First Draft workshop series, monthly virtual salons where writers get social, share their work, and leave with great stories.

Instructor: Talia Lakshmi Kolluri

Theme: The Magic of the Natural World

Talia Lakshmi Kolluri is a mixed South Asian American writer from Northern California. Her debut collection of short stories, WHAT WE FED TO THE MANTICORE (Tin House 2022), is a finalist for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the 2023 Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, and was selected as a 2023 ALA RUSA Notable Book. It’s available now wherever books are sold. Her short fiction has been published in THE MINNESOTA REVIEW, ECOTONE, SOUTHERN HUMANITIES REVIEW, THE COMMON, ONE STORY, ORION, FIVE DIALS, and the ADROIT JOURNAL. A lifelong Californian, Talia lives in the Central Valley with her husband, a teacher and printmaker, and a very skittish cat named Fig.