Hema's stories live at the intersection of women, class, culture, and power.
Her short fiction has been published or is forthcoming in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Common, The Pinch, New Letters, Fourteen Hills, American Literary Review, Litro Magazine, and elsewhere.
A 2019 Grotto Fellow, she is an alum of The Kenyon Workshop, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and The Napa Valley Conference.
Originally from Chennai, India, she lives in San Francisco. She is currently at work on a linked stories collection.
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Nicks and Cuts [The Common, September 2024]
Back home, time was time, and money was money, but in America, a minute saved is a dollar earned.... My amma was right. She was right about a lot of other things, too. America is the best and the worst thing that happened to you, she says. You love yourself more but others less.
How to Color Your Hair with Henna [The Pinch, July 2024]
Strain the tea leaves. Let the liquid cool. The sun has set on that empire but risen elsewhere. The girls still pick. They still drink tea dust and work twelve-hour days under the hot gaze of an unforgiving sun.
Mrs. D'Souza's Mango Tree [Fourteen Hills, June 2022]
He nodded, sniffling and wiping his nose on his cotton shirt sleeve, a hand-me-down from Aarthi. His threadbare shorts were a size too big, and a coir rope served as a makeshift belt. His shoulder blades stuck out like bat wings.
Silent Downpour [American Literary Review, May 2018]
It’s been raining for three days straight. The wind hisses through the narrow tunnels between the buildings that shoot out vertically toward the sky, determined to escape the city’s squalor. It whips away with my umbrella, stripping me of my only defense.
Sensible Shoes [Tahoma Literary Review, June 2018]
Selvi stared at the rows of shoes and sandals, rocking slightly on the heels of shiny black shoes Viji had polished to perfection. Two neat braids, their ends tied with white ribbons, bobbed against her back as she rocked. She walked past the plain white lace-up canvas shoes, drawn to the fashionable tennis shoes with red chevrons and a red trimming in the back. Picking one up, she ran her fingers over the chevron.
Kulfiwala [Litro Magazine, December 2016]
We walked towards the gardens around the corner. It was the first day after a week of monsoon rains, and for once, the streets were not flooded with water up to my shins. The usually grimy sidewalk was wet but clean, and the air smelled of wet earth and night-blooming jasmine. My sandals squished sinking into the damp grass. We found a dry bench and sat down.