Samrat Upadhyay moved to Indiana in 2003 to teach at Indiana University Bloomington, where he is the Martha C. Kraft Professor of Humanities. His first book, the short story collection Arresting God in Kathmandu (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), was translated into French and Greek, received a Whiting Writers’ Award, and was selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great Writers Program in 2001. His stories have been broadcast on National Public Radio and published widely, including in The Best of the Writing Workshops and The Best American Short Stories 1999. He has written many of his books in Bloomington cafés. Originally from Nepal, Upadhyay is proud to call himself a Hoosier.