Shobha Rao moved to the United States from India at the age of seven. She is the author of An Unrestored Woman, a short story collection, and the novels Indian Country and Girls Burn Brighter. Rao is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and was a Grace Paley Teaching Fellow at The New School. Her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories. Girls Burn Brighter was long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award and the Goodreads Choice Awards. She lives in San Francisco.