Vauhini Vara

2024 Alumna

Cottage: Fir

Bio: Vauhini Vara is the author of Searches, named a best book of the year by Esquire and a Belletrist Book Club pick; Publisher’s Weekly called it a “remarkable meditation.” Her previous books are This is Salvaged, which was longlisted for the Story Prize and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and won the High Plains Book Award and the Kalinga Literary Festival Fiction Book Award, and The Immortal King Rao, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and won the Atta Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize and the Colorado Book Award. She is also a journalist and a 2025 Omidyar Network Reporter in Residence, currently working as a contributing writer for Businessweek. She has previously written and edited for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times Magazine. She mentors writers working on books through the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Book Project.