About this Event
They will be discussing Asha's new book, !
A heartrending family saga following three generations of women connected by a fantastic tapestry through which they inherit the experiences
of those that lived before them, sweeping readers from Partition-era India to modern day Brooklyn.
Registration includes a signed copy of the book and an opportunity to meet the author.
If you are unable to attend the event after purchasing a ticket, you are required to pick up your copy of the book (with proof of purchase from your event registration) within 30 days after the event date. If the book is not picked up by that date, you relinquish your copy to Tattered Cover Book Store.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she’s long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated by a secret her family has kept for centuries, one that Ayukta will be the first to share with someone outside their bloodline: the women in her family inherit a mysterious tapestry, through which each generation can experience the memories of those who came before her.
Ayukta invites Nadya into this lineage, carrying her through its past. She relives her grandmother Amla’s life: Once a happy child in Karachi, Amla migrates to Gujarat during Partition, witnessing violence and loss that forever shape her approach to marriage and motherhood. Amla’s daughter, Arni, bears this weight in her own blood in 1974, when gender equity and urban class distinctions divide the community as a bold student movement takes hold. As Ayukta unspools these generations of women—whole decades of love, loss, heartbreak, and revival—she reveals the tapestry’s second gift: the ability for each of these women to dramatically reshape their own worlds. Like all power, both fantastic and societal, this inheritance is more treacherous than it seems.
What would it mean, to impart an impossible burden? To withhold these incredible gifts?
Sweeping, deeply felt and intergenerational, A Thousand Times Before is a debut as poetic as it is propulsive, as healing as it is heartbreaking, as it examines what it means to carry our past with us and to pass it on. Rooted in a tender love story, and spun with a tremendous amount of care, this book is a rare, remarkable feat from an incredible new literary talent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Asha Thanki is an essayist and fiction writer. Asha’s work has appeared in The Southern Review, Platypus Press’ wildness, The Common, Catapult, Hyphen, and more. She is a Kundiman fellow and has received support through scholarships and grants from Sewanee Writers Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Speculative Literature Foundation. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota. A Thousand Times Before is her debut novel.
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Raksha Vasudevan was born in India and raised in Canada, Raksha Vasudevan is a journalist and former aid worker. She has reported on issues of race, environmental justice, housing, and "progress" for The New York Times, VICE, The Guardian, Outside, and High Country News, where she is also a contributing editor. Her essays and commentary on colonial legacy and family estrangement appear in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, Guernica, Hazlitt, The Washington Post, and LitHub, among others. Her work has been nominated for a Canadian National Magazine Award, two Pushcart Prizes, a Best of the Net award and listed as "Notable" in Best American Essays 2020 and 2021. Raksha has received fellowships and support from Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Writers' Trust of Canada. She lives in Denver with her partner and dog.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Tattered Cover Colfax Ave, 2526 E Colfax Ave, Denver, United States
USD 34.21 to USD 45.63