Released today, Aruni Kashyap's new novel, “How to Date a Fanatic,” follows characters navigating political polarization, state power, and social division in contemporary India. The novel's central questions—about democracy, institutions, and marginalized voices—also inform Kashyap's leadership of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. 

Since taking the program’s helm in 2022, Kashyap has helped strengthen its international profile, expanding opportunities for writers, translators, and scholars from around the world while building on its longstanding tradition of global literary engagement. 

As a novelist, translator, and scholar whose work bridges South Asia and the United States, Kashyap believes creative writing programs should bring literary traditions into conversation across languages and cultures. 

"Over the last decade, our creative writing program has evolved into one of the nation's most distinctive graduate programs for writers," said Roland Vegso, professor and head of the Department of English. "By integrating creative practice with rigorous scholarly research through its Ph.D. degree in English, the program has developed a model that prepares writers not only as artists but also as teachers, critics, editors, translators, and public intellectuals." 

Poet and translator Andrew Zawacki says Kashyap has expanded the program’s international impact. 

"Through his own compelling work, his wise and generous mentorship of our students, and his bold leadership as a director and colleague, Kashyap has turned our internationalist program into a more fully-fledged international one," Zawacki said. "Among other things, he has greatly broadened the demographics of our doctoral student body, and as a result, we're a much more eclectic, heterogeneous, and curious community than ever." 

Faculty members say Kashyap's leadership, along with the hiring of Nigerian novelist Chigozie Obioma, has further elevated international literature, translation, and global creative practice as defining strengths of the program. 

That same global perspective informs “How to Date a Fanatic.” The novel follows friends from India's Northeast pursuing ordinary lives in Delhi as rising political tensions reshape their world. 

"Most of them just want to live, love, work, and have an ordinary life of comforts, but as division forces increase violence, even they are not spared," Kashyap said. "They are queer, lower-caste, or Muslim minorities in India, and how they experience this new phase in their country is a unique, different point of view than the rest." 

Growing up in Assam during an insurgency shaped the novel, but writing about contemporary events presented a different artistic challenge. 

"I found myself challenged artistically to respond to events that had just recently happened," he said. "Soon, I realized that fiction is more of a process of distillation." 

The novel warns against assuming democratic institutions will always protect citizens. 

Kashyap argues that many people believe crises will affect someone else or that systems will inevitably correct themselves. 

"Most of the characters believe the repression won't touch them, until it does," he said. "What happens to one eventually happens to us all. In a dysfunctional state, no one is immune." 

For Kashyap, the message extends beyond India. 

"Places that seem immune from political erosion are not," he said. "The trust that the system will correct itself before institutions collapse should not be taken for granted." 

His work as a translator reflects the same commitment to broadening literary conversations. Kashyap was the first Assamese-language translator to receive a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and his forthcoming translation, “The Smell of Bamboo Blossoms,” will be the first Assamese-language work published by Modern Library Classics. 

Colleagues say his emphasis on translation, international writing, and global exchange has expanded what students encounter in workshops and classrooms, helping position Franklin as a crossroads between Southern literature and world literature. 

"The lesson for me as I wrote this was that we have to remain committed to sustaining democratic forces and work for equality always," Kashyap said. "In a radioactive, broken state, no one is spared." 

Whether through fiction, translation, or academic leadership, Kashyap's work reflects the same goal: expanding the stories people encounter and the conversations they are willing to have.