Vandana Nair grew up in India believing that relationships, in life and on the page, need to be nurtured from their roots. Living away from her land of birth has given her the distance essential for mining themes for stories, essays and other forms from her cultural home and heritage. Migrations across geographies have enabled her to complete her undergraduate degree in India, work as a freelance writer, and attain an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop in Fiction.

Punch, her debut novel, can be read on Kindle. She has also contributed The Signature, a short story, to The Knot Wound Round Your Finger (Bell Press), an anthology on memory, history and inheritance, which was nominated by the publishers for a 2021 Pushcart Prize. One of her essays, How my mother taught me to make pickles, has been made into a 25 minutes short Hindi language film called Achaar, which received an Honorable Jury mention at the 10th Kolkata Shorts International Film Festival-2021. Her book reviews of translated texts from India have appeared in Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation, The University of Iowa. Her novella, The Wedding, is a forthcoming release from Santa Fe Writer’s Project in 2026. She is presently working on her literary women’s fiction collection She/Her.

Nair lives in Redmond, Washington State, with her husband and two youngsters, one of whom is a canine.