On Earth as It Is in Heaven

To turn earth into heaven is a tall order, but no matter where they live on this planet, the people in these stories hold out hope that at least a small portion of heaven might brighten their patch of earth. A doctor and his relatives are at loggerheads over whether England will be more of a paradise if a splash of Pakistan is added. A Tamil doctor who flees his homeland torn by civil war struggles to make a new life in the American Midwest. A New Zealander visiting India strikes up an unlikely friendship with a little boy facing hard times. An American mother struggles to live without her son following the Iraq War. A Sri Lankan aboriginal finds (and then loses) her paradise when confronted with visiting researchers several years apart. These vivid characters and more demonstrate what connects us all, no matter where we're from or where we find ourselves.

Vishwas R. Gaitonde's formative years were spent in India. He has lived in Britain and now resides in the United States. Distinctions include residencies in fiction at The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (Minnesota), scholarships to the Tin House and Sewanee writers' conferences, and fellowships to The Summer Literary Seminar (Canada) and Hawthornden Castle Writers Residency (Scotland). He was a finalist for The Chautauqua Institution's Janus Prize "for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers' imaginations." His stories have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Epiphany, Gargoyle, The Iowa Review, Kweli, The MacGuffin, and Santa Monica Review, among other places.