Deepa Rajagopalan: Read and Study Different Authors

Deepa Rajagopalan won the 2021 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies such as the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, the New Quarterly, Room, the Malahat Review, Event and ARC. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph. Born to Indian parents in Saudi Arabia, she has lived in many cities across India, the U.S. and Canada. Deepa works in the tech industry in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Deepa Rajagopalan

Photo by Ema Suvajac

In this interview, Deepa discusses the process of writing her debut story collection, Peacocks of Instagram, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Deepa Rajagopalan
Literary agent: Marilyn Biderman (Transatlantic Agency)
Book title: Peacocks of Instagram
Publisher: House of Anansi Press
Release date: May 7, 2024
Genre/category: Literary fiction
Elevator pitch: Engrossing, witty yet devastating stories about diasporic Indians that deftly question what it means to be safe, to survive, and to call a place home.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I wanted to write a book about people who look familiar—the immigrant you think you know—and subvert the reader’s expectations of them. Where they came from, what they desire, what they fear, what they are capable of.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I started writing this collection during my Creative Writing MFA in 2020. I don’t think the fundamental idea changed, but individual stories have gone through many changes. Some characters who were in the background, have become more important. Some of them got their own stories. In some cases, I rewrote entire stories when I felt something was missing.

There’s a story in the book called “Surya, Listen!” which is about a mother and her child, and how an accident changes their lives. I went through numerous drafts of the story, and always felt something was missing. In the end, I realized what was missing was the joy of the child. The story had become so much about how the mother navigated the experience, that I had forgotten to bring the child to the foreground. I rewrote the entire story until I could see the child clearly.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

This is my first book, so there were lots of learning moments. Finding an agent, finding a publisher, the editing process, the cover design process, the sales, marketing, publicity process … everything is new.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Arundhati Roy says, “Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world … It’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world.”

When you start to write, you think you know these characters and you are making up these stories. But then these characters follow you around, while you’re driving, on the subway, in the woods, and when you sit down to write, they surprise you. They surprise you with their wit, their ambition, their sensitivity, their audacity, their desires, their abandon.

There’s a story in my book, “Rahel,” which is about a woman named Rahel. Before I wrote the story, it would never have occurred to me to imagine someone like her. She is so singular, so unbothered about who she is perceived to be. These are the kind of surprises I am talking about.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope some readers will connect with the characters in the book. As in, this person is like me, and I feel thrilled to find someone who looks like me or talks like me or feels like me on the page.

And I hope some other readers will find characters who they thought they knew but are surprised by, maybe a little humbled by, and I hope they will question their biases.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Read and study different authors. Really study them. What they show and what they don’t. How they exercise restraint, how they hold back, so that the reader must feel what is there to feel. How they create atmosphere. Study them, and then try different things, until you find your own voice.

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