Vishwas Gaitonde's formative years were spent in India. He has lived in Britain and now resides in the United States of America. He has been published in all three of those countries as well as the Czech Republic, Belgium, Sweden, and elsewhere.

 

His short story collection 'On Earth As It Is In Heaven' won the 2023 Orison Prize for fiction, and will be published by Orison Books in September 2025. His writings have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and online. Literary journals in which his work has been published include The Iowa Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Santa Monica Review, Epiphany, Gargoyle, and Mid-American Review.

 

Distinctions include two residency fellowships each to The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (Red Wing, Minnesota), and The Hawthornden Castle International Writers Retreat (Lasswade, Scotland). He was awarded a fellowship by Summer Literary Seminars (Canada), and scholarships by the Sewanee Writers Conference (Tennessee Williams Scholarship), Tin House Summer Writing Workshops, and the Community of Writers Workshop (Maat Scholarship).

 

He was a finalist in The George Floyd Short Story Competition conducted by the Nottingham Writers Studio, Nottingham, England; his story was published in their contest anthology Black Lives. An audio file of the same is available through Nottingham City Libraries. He was also a finalist in The Chautauqua Institution's Janus Prize "for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers' imaginations."

 

When Vishwas isn't writing or editing, he loves to listen to music, to travel, and frequent bookstores. He is an avid walker and likes to sample cuisines from various cultures. He has dabbled in watercolors and has appeared on the amateur stage as an actor and a singer, often performing his own compositions. Starting his adventurous journey on the stage of life from Chennai (then Madras) in India, he has done his fair share of globetrotting and now calls North Carolina home.

 

Photo credit: C. Anthony Huber