Chandra Prasad is the author of many books, including five critically acclaimed novels.
Her newest young adult novel, Mercury Boys, has drawn comparisons to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs and The Fever by Megan Abbott.
Chandra Prasad’s first young adult novel, Damselfly, was published by Scholastic in 2018. School Library Journal says, “Prasad’s [YA] debut is a compelling modern-day adventure,” while Booklist hails it “a compulsive read.” Damselfly is currently implemented in middle school and high school curricula across the country as a modern “parallel read” with Lord of the Flies.
Prasad also penned Breathe the Sky: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Amelia Earhart. Booklist praises this “insightful novel” for getting “inside Amelia Earhart’s psyche to give life to the woman behind the myth.” Wally Lamb proclaims, “from lift-off to landing, Breathe the Sky is a novel that soars.” Breathe the Sky was a ForeWord Magazine finalist for “Book of the Year” in the category of Historical Fiction.
Prasad is the author of On Borrowed Wings, a novel that follows a quarryman’s daughter as she attends 1930s Yale University in the guise of a boy. National Public Radio hails the novel “great, believable storytelling” about “race, class, gender, and family.” The author of Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen, notes that Prasad’s novel “combines drama and a strong sense of place that provides both a lesson in history and a fine read.” On Borrowed Wings was a Connecticut Book Award finalist.
Prasad is the originator and editor of, and a contributor to, Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience, which was published to international raves by W.W. Norton. A combination of Indian, Italian, Swedish, and English, Prasad drew inspiration from her own multiracial identity in assembling the book, which includes original material by Danzy Senna, Rebecca Walker, Ruth Ozeki, and Mat Johnson, among others. Booklist calls the anthology “absorbing and thought-provoking,” while The San Francisco Chronicle calls it “wonderful, deftly crafted, and satisfying.” Mixed has been adopted in university-level English courses across the country.
Tom Perrotta, author of the book and motion picture Little Children, praises Prasad’s first novel, Death of a Circus, for its “Dickensian verve, keen historical detail, and heart.” Booklist says it’s “packed with glamour and grit.” Prasad’s career guide Outwitting the Job Market was also well received by its audience: employers, job seekers, and students. Prasad’s short works have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Week, the official magazine of The U.S. Department of State, Teen Voices, and Faultline, the literary and arts magazine of the University of California at Irvine.
Prasad lives and works in Connecticut. A graduate of Yale, she is a fellow at Morse, one of Yale’s residential colleges. Currently, she is working on more young adult novels, among other projects.
