Where to Carry the Sound (Volume 23) (Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction)

Silver Winner for the Foreword Indies Award in Short Stories

The stories in Where to Carry the Sound center on characters excavating their own lives: unearthing family secrets, exploring inherited silences, and rediscovering what might have seemed lost to them. Wherever these characters find themselves—including brewing bootleg liquor in Prohibition-era Bombay, finding remnants of a new language at an archaeological dig in Andhra Pradesh, seeking mirages above the Arctic Circle, or setting up an outpost on the moon—each seeks to reconcile a past continually bleeding into the present and to forge a path of belonging to carry them into the future.

“This collection of nine magical stories (including a few actual fairy tales) enchanted me. Many of the stories are set in India, and most of the narrators are women—photographers, bootleggers, archeologists, religious pilgrims, perfumers, and one lonely lunar caretaker. The writing is both lush and lean, and the images of marigolds, haunted villages, and man-killing tigers are memorable. The ends aren’t always happily-ever-after but are always satisfying. Where to Carry the Sound is a delight to read.”—Molly Giles, judge and author of The Home for Unwed Husbands

NINA SUDHAKAR is a writer, poet, and lawyer. Her work has appeared in Salamander (winner of the 2023 Fiction Contest), The Rumpus, Witness, and elsewhere, and she is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Matriarchetypes and Embodiments. She lives in Chicago and can be found at www.ninasudhakar.com.