Akil Kumarasamy is the author of the novel, Meet Us by the Roaring Sea (FSG, 2022), shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize and Lambda Literary Award, and the linked story collection, Half Gods, (FSG, 2018), which was named a New York TimesEditors’ Choice, was awarded the Bard Fiction Prize and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, American Short Fiction, BOMB, among others. She has received fellowships from the University of East Anglia, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Yaddo, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She is an assistant professor in the Rutgers University-Newark MFA program.