About this Event
East City Bookshop welcomes Reena Shah to discuss her novel, Every Happiness.
Note on Format: This hybrid event will have both an in-person component with limited seating as well as a virtual broadcast via Zoom Webinar. Both in-person and virtual attendees will be able to pose questions to the author during audience Q&A.
Pre-order your copy of Every Happiness for the event in Eventbrite check-out as an add-on to your ticket.
ABOUT EVERY HAPPINESS
Every Happiness is a dazzling debut that explores the ties that bind two women across decades and continents despite rivalry, class difference, and the conflicting needs of family and self.
Deepa and Ruchi are 12 years old when they meet at their Catholic school in India, but their connection is swift and lasting. As the two girls grow up and face their families' expectations and the limits of their ambitions, their friendship is marked by intimacy, jealousy, and suppressed desire.
When, in their twenties, Deepa marries a doctor and moves from India to the suburbs of Connecticut, Ruchi quickly finds an engineer bound for the same state and follows her friend across the world. But life in the United States is different than either woman expects. Deepa's daughter seeks affection Deepa refuses to give, and Ruchi's son resists her smothering care. At the same time, Deepa and Ruchi find their closeness tested by a growing class disparity, competing family needs, and the differences in their desires. Ultimately, when Ruchi discovers a dangerous secret about Deepa's husband's wealth, both women are forced to weigh the tangled bonds of their friendship with their lives, and their families', in the burgeoning Indian American community.
“Moving and unforgettable” (Kimberly King Parsons), Every Happiness explores the slippery edges of a lifelong relationship, and the invisible threads that bind us, sometimes painfully, to those we love most.
Reena Shah is a writer, editor, and teacher. Her work has been featured in the Masters Review, Electric Literature, Joyland, BBC, the American Prospect, National Geographic, and the Guardian, among other publications. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, Millay Arts, Tin House, Sustainable Arts Foundation, Cuttyhunk Island Residency, and the Fulbright Foundation. She received an MFA in fiction from the Michener Center for Writers, where she won the Keene Prize for Literature. For many years she was a kathak dancer in New York and India. She now lives on Roosevelt Island, NY with her family and teaches in a public school.
Shannon Sanders is an attorney and the author of the forthcoming novel TheGreat Wherever (Holt, July 2026), one of Publisher's Weekly's 10 Most Anticipated Literary Fiction titles for Spring/Summer 2026, and of the short-story collection Company, which was the 2024 winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for Fiction and a Publisher's Weekly and Debutiful Best Book of 2023. Her short fiction appears in One Story, Sewanee Review, TriQuarterly, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She lives near DC with her husband and three sons.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
East City Bookshop, 645 Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast, Washington, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 41.11
