Akil Kumarasamy is an American writer, who have blended various genres including science fiction and put different voices in diaspora communities in conversation, centering individuals in marginalized communities. Her novel, Meet Us by the Roaring Sea, questions what compassion looks like in the digital age, blurring the boundaries between reader and narrator. She is also an assistant professor at Rutgers University, where she mentors many students.


Akil is interested in how ancient and modern worlds collide and morph in the space of cities, and through this fellowship she will investigate how ancient spiritual practices coexist in modern cities like Tokyo. She will research ancient Japanese spiritual practices such as itako and reiki healing, and explore how these practices have changed to fit into Japanese urban spaces, and how they are preserved in more remote areas.

Profile
Akil Kumarasamy’s debut novel, Meet Us by the Roaring Sea, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2022, was selected as a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and was shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize and Lambda Literary Award. Her linked short story collection, Half Gods, (FSG, 2018), received the Bard Fiction Prize and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize as well as a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, American Short Fiction, BOMB, among others.  She is an assistant professor in the Rutgers University-Newark MFA program and a 2024-25 fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.