With the theme of working for equity across the arts, GrubStreet's Light Up the Center event this year on Thursday, November 2nd will feature performances by Boston-based artists from diverse disciplines, like GrubStreet author Shilpi Suneja. Born in India, her work has been nominated for multiple awards. Her writing has been supported by numerous prestigious fellowships and a Grub Street Novel Incubator Scholarship. She holds an MA in English from New York University and an MFA in creative writing from Boston University. She has just released her debut novel, House of Caravans (September 2023, Milkweed Editions).

We recently caught up with Shilpi and asked her:

GrubStreet: What is most exciting about participating in this multidisciplinary event surrounding equity and identity? Why is coming together to witness these important works and conversation at GrubStreet meaningful and urgent?

Shilpi Suneja: “GrubStreet is that rare community that makes visible the true diversity of Boston's artistic and literary bounty and brilliance. It is absolutely thrilling to include my debut novel in conversation with artists such as Porsha Olayiwola, Fabiola Mendez, and Fiona Maurissette. It's conversations like these that show us there is no one way to freedom, no one freedom. My artistic path to identity and visibility is via history, compiling scholarship on colonialism, naming the borders and boundaries that have separated us and told us, you are this or that nationality, naming the laws and language that tells us, you cannot sit together, love together. It is thrilling to know there are many other paths. It's conversations like these that show us there is no one story, but the stories share hearts, the themes repeat. Our collective rage, our collective softness are the tapestries that hold us, deliver us. I'm so happy that GrubStreet assembles us repeatedly for these realizations."

Learn more about and reserve your tickets for Light Up the Center today!