(James, Tania) Tania James has been a fellow of Ragdale, Macdowell, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Fulbright Program. She teaches in the MFA program at George Mason University. Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Granta, Guernica, One Story, A Public Space, and The Kenyon Review. Born in Kentucky to Indian parents, James is the author of a story collection, Aerogrammes, and two novels, Atlas of Unknowns and her latest, The Tusk that Did the Damage (Knopf), which was named a Best Book of 2015 by the San Francisco Chronicle and NPR, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. The novel is an utterly contemporary story about an ancient and majestic elephant, and his dangerous connection to the land and the people around him. Orphaned by poachers as a calf and sold into a life of labor, Gravedigger has broken free of his chains and is terrorizing the South Indian countryside. Caught up in the violence are the studious younger son of a rice farmer drawn into the sordid world of poaching; and a young American documentary filmmaker engaged in a risky affair with the veterinarian who is her subject.
