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.
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.
Coming Home [Full Grown People, October 2017]
My mother followed my life from afar, reading and hearing about it through snippets in e-mails and static-filled phone conversations: graduation, new jobs, new homes, new adventures in new cities with strange names. Each step forward in my American life seemed to drive a wider wedge between us. The more independent and confident I became, the less I relied on her.