Shona Ramaya

About Shona Ramaya

Shona Ramaya has been praised by Cosmopolitan as a “born storyteller,” and by Mira Nair as a writer who “has the rare knowledge of knowing her characters so well that when you finish the book, you feel they have spoken to you.”  Percival Everett says of her last book, Operation Monsoon, “these beautiful stories move with a patience that is uncommon. They are novelistic in feel, but perfectly conceived as pieces.  The characters are rendered with great affection and nothing in their world is simple.” 

Shona has published three books: Flute, a novel (Michael Joseph/Abacus/Viking—1989); Beloved Mother, Queen of the Night, a collection of stories (Secker & Warburg—1993); Operation Monsoon, a collection of stories (Graywolf, 2003), which received the Massachusetts Fiction Honor Award.  She received her graduate degree at Syracuse University (English & Creative Writing), and has taught for several years, at Le Moyne and Hamilton College in New York, and as Writer-in-Residence, at Trinity College in Hartford, CT.  Currently, she lives in Massachusetts.