SAN FRANCISCO (October 4, 2023)—The editors of Narrative have awarded Neha Chaudhary-Kamdar the 2023 Narrative Prize, given annually for the best work by an emerging writer published in the previous year in Narrative. Chaudhary-Kamdar, originally from Hyderabad, India, earns the prize for her novel excerpt “Kartika.”

The Narrative Prize has been awarded every year since Narrative’s launch in 2003, with this year’s prize marking a resounding twenty-year milestone for the magazine.

In honoring Chaudhary-Kamdar with the Narrative Prize—which includes funds of $5,000—Narrative cofounder and editor Tom Jenks remarked, “The power of imagination with which Chaudhary-Kamdar brings to life the varied Bombay world of teenage schoolgirls, mothers and servants, fathers and uncles, Bollywood stars and directors, rivalries, a crucial lie, and an overhead confession is matched by her human understanding and the gift of her observations. She’s a writer to read and reread for pleasure.”

Chaudhary-Kamdar holds an MFA in Fiction from Boston University and a PhD in Screen Cultures from Northwestern University. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she teaches English at the Branson School in Ross, California, and lives in Oakland.

The Narrative Prize, which recognizes writers whose talent and accomplishments place them at the forefront of a new generation of storytellers, has been awarded to twenty-four previous winners, including Morgan Talty, Tryphena Yeboah, Gbenga Adesina, Paisley Rekdal, Javier Zamora, Ocean Vuong, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Natalie Diaz, Anthony Marra, Maud Newton, Michael Dickman, Saidiya Hartman, Mermer Blakeslee, and Min Jin Lee. See all the winning works here.

Founded in 2003, Narrative, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age by supporting the finest writing talent and encouraging readership across generations, in schools, and around the globe. As the premier digital publisher of first-rank fiction, poetry, essays, and art, each year Narrative publishes hundreds of well-known and emerging writers. The Narrative for Schools program supports teachers and students around the world, who are too often hampered by limited resources, by providing free reading, lesson plans, video tutorials, and the annual Narrative High School Writing Contest to inspire the next generation of readers and writers. Narrative for Schools programming reaches 120,000 students and teachers in schools worldwide—in thirty-six countries and throughout the US. Narrative was founded on the conviction that there should be no socioeconomic barriers to accessing great literature. Our ever-expanding modern library of thousands of stories, poems, and essays is free to all.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Narrative, contact editors Tom Jenks and Carol Edgarian.