Rakesh Satyal is an American
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...
, best known for his
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature.The awards were instituted i ...
-winning
debut novel
A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to p ...
''Blue Boy''.
["Gaga at the Gala: Rakesh Satyal Wins Lambda Literary Award, Sings About It"]
. brooklyntheborough.com, June 2010. ''Blue Boy'' won the 2009 Prose/Poetry Award from the Association of Asian American Studies and was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Edmund White Debut Fiction Award and Satyal was a recipient of a 2010 Fellowship in Fiction from the
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...
.
Early life
Rakesh Satyal was born and raised in
Cincinnati
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...
,
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
. His parents, Vinay and Lalita Satyal, emigrated to the United States from India. He has a
fraternal twin
Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two e ...
brother, Vikas. His older brother is stand-up comedian
Rajiv Satyal. Satyal attended Fairfield Senior High School. Satyal graduated with an A.B. in comparative literature from Princeton University in 2002 after completing a 272-page-long senior thesis, titled "Dissonance (A Novel)," under the supervision of Lynn Tillman and
David Ebershoff
David Ebershoff is an American writer, editor, and teacher. His debut novel, ''The Danish Girl'', was adapted into an Academy Awards, Academy Award-winning The Danish Girl (film), film of the same name in 2015, while his third novel, ''The 19th ...
. He was a member of the a cappella group the Princeton Nassoons.
[Princeton Nassoons] His freshman year, he created the celebration that occurs each semester on Dean's Date, where students cheer on their classmates to turn in their written work on time.
Career
![9](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/9.21.14SomethingToHidePanelByLuigiNovi8.jpg)
With the exception of a few years in the world of branding, Satyal has worked in book publishing since 2001, when he was an intern at
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
. He worked at what was formerly known as the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, then
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News ...
, then
Atria Books, a division of
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest pu ...
. He is currently an Executive Editor at HarperOne, a division of
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News ...
. Over the course of his career, he has worked with such authors as
Tori Amos
Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full ...
,
Clive Barker
Clive Barker (born 5 October 1952) is an English novelist, playwright, author, film director, and visual artist who came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories, the ''Books of Blood'', which established him as a leading h ...
,
Common,
Daniel Lavery,
Janet Mock
Janet Mock (born March 10, 1983) is an American writer, television host, director, producer and transgender rights activist. Her debut book, the memoir '' Redefining Realness'', became a ''New York Times'' bestseller. She is a contributing edit ...
,
Terry Castle
Terry Castle (born October 18, 1953) is an American literary scholar. Once described by Susan Sontag as "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today," she has published eight books, including the anthology ''The Literatu ...
,
Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho de Souza (, ; born 24 August 1947) is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002. His novel ''The Alchemist'' became an international best-seller and he has published 28 more book ...
,
Joey Graceffa
Joseph Michael Graceffa Jr. (; born May 16, 1991) is an American YouTuber, vlogger, actor, author, and producer. He runs four active YouTube channels, all named after him. His main channel is dedicated to vlogging, while the second features vide ...
,
Vestal McIntyre,
Armistead Maupin
Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. ( ) (born May 13, 1944) is an American writer notable for '' Tales of the City'', a series of novels set in San Francisco.
Early life
Maupin was born in Washington, D.C., to Diana Jane (Barton) and Armistead Jones Ma ...
,
Michael Arceneaux,
Chasten Buttigieg,
Anuradha Roy,
Rahul Mehta,
Ann Powers
Ann K. Powers (born February 4, 1964) is an American writer and pop music critic. She is a music critic for NPR and a contributor at the ''Los Angeles Times'', where she was previously chief pop critic. She has also served as pop critic at ''The ...
, and
Paul Rudnick
Paul Rudnick (born December 29, 1957) is an American writer. His plays have been produced both on and off Broadway and around the world. He is also known for having written the screenplays for several movies, including '' Sister Act'', ''Addams ...
.
''
Blue Boy'' was published in 2009. Satyal's second novel, ''No One Can Pronounce My Name'', was published in May 2017 by
Picador
A ''picador'' (; pl. ''picadores'') is one of the pair of horse-mounted bullfighters in a Spanish-style bullfight that jab the bull with a lance. They perform in the ''tercio de varas'', which is the first of the three stages in a stylized bullf ...
USA. His work has also appeared in the anthologies ''The Man I Might Become'', ''Fresh Men 2'', ''The Letter Q'', and ''Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey''. Satyal sometimes performs in New York City as a singer. His cabaret act has been mentioned in ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', the ''
New York Observer'', and ''
Page Six
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established i ...
''. He also garnered attention for his acceptance speech at the Lambda Literary Awards gala, which he sang to the tune of
Lady Gaga
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ( ; born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her image reinventions and musical versatility. Gaga began performing as a teenag ...
's "
Bad Romance
"Bad Romance" is a song by American singer Lady Gaga from her third extended play (EP), ''The Fame Monster'' (2009)—the reissue of her debut studio album, ''The Fame'' (2008). Gaga wrote and produced the song with RedOne. Following an illegal ...
".
[
His novel 'Blue Boy' is being turned into a film by the actor, comedian, and writer ]Nik Dodani
Nik Dodani (born December 19, 1993) is an American actor, writer, and comedian known for his roles as Zahid in the Netflix comedy-drama series ''Atypical'', and Pat Patel in the revival of the popular CBS sitcom '' Murphy Brown''.
He also star ...
. His novel ''No One Can Pronounce My Name'' is being made into a film by Christine Vachon
Christine Vachon (; born November 21, 1962) is an American film producer active in the American independent film sector.
Christine Vachon produced Todd Haynes' first feature, ''Poison'', which was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 1991 Sundan ...
of Killer Films
Killer Films is a New York City-based independent film production company founded by movie producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler in 1995. The company has produced a number of the most acclaimed American independent films over the past tw ...
.
Personal life
Satyal lives in New York City with his husband, John Maas, a literary agent. His brother is comedian Rajiv Satyal. He has a fraternal twin, Vikas Satyal.
Bibliography
* ''Blue Boy'' (2009)
* '' No One Can Pronounce My Name (novel)'' (2017)
See also
* Indians in the New York City metropolitan area
Indians in the New York City metropolitan area constitute one of the largest and fastest-growing ethnicities in the New York City metropolitan area of the United States. The New York City region is home to the largest and most prominent Indian ...
* LGBT culture in New York City
* List of LGBT people from New York City
* Literature review
A literature review is an overview of the previously published works on a topic. The term can refer to a full scholarly paper or a section of a scholarly work such as a book, or an article. Either way, a literature review is supposed to provid ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Satyal, Rakesh
21st-century American novelists
American male novelists
American gay writers
Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction winners
American male writers of Indian descent
Living people
Writers from Cincinnati
American LGBT novelists
21st-century American male writers
Novelists from Ohio
1980 births
American twins