Coming of Age in a Rapidly Changing World: Fiction

Do you feel like the world is burning down around you? Well, here’s a session for you. Two novels take on the campus experience during rapidly changing times: In Aruni Kashyap’s How to Date a Fanatic, young professor Rohit returns to Delhi University in India. As the country’s political tensions erupt on campus, Rohit must navigate queer relationships, his identity, and his hope for a better future in an unpredictable political landscape. In Malavika Kannan’s Unprecedented Times, a college student arrives on campus ready to fall in love. Then the COVID pandemic hits. As the world outside becomes a terrifying place, she and her classmates start questioning what the world promises versus what their lives will turn out to be.  

Purchase your book from Charis Books & More. When you check-out from that link, please mention that you will need to pick your book up at the event. Books will also be for sale on-site by Charis, and a portion of your purchase will benefit the Decatur Book Festival.

This event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required, and seating is first come, first served. Signing information: Signing time: 1:30 PM

Signing location: Marriott Conference Center

About the Authors

Malavika Kannan is a Tamil American writer whose work appears in The Nation, The Washington Post, New York, Teen Vogue, and elsewhere. Her villain origin story is that, as a teenager in Florida, she organized for generational movements such as March for Our Lives and the Women’s March. Her YA novel All the Yellow Suns was published in 2023. She graduated from Stanford University and now moonlights as a gay socialite in Brooklyn, where she co-hosts the popular mutual aid supper club Girls Eat Girls. You can follow her on Instagram @malavika.kannan and on TikTok @literarymal. Her new book is Unprecedented Times.

Aruni Kashyap is an acclaimed author and translator of several novels and poetry collections and has received awards and fellowships from Harvard, NEA, and more. His work has appeared in CNN, Elle, India Today, The New Indian Express, and other publications. He is an associate professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia. His new book is How to Date a Fanatic.

About the Moderator

Topher Payne is a playwright and screenwriter. Topher is a contributor for WABE's City Lights Collective, and an inductee in the Georgia Theatre Hall of Fame.