Breaking Through Life’s Confines: Q&A With Anu Kandikuppa

In The Confines, Anu Kandikuppa’s captivating debut collection, the restrictions of a conservative society seep into the inner lives of husbands and wives. Bloom sat down with Anu to discuss the collection and her writing process.

The Confines is out now from Veliz Books.

Shabana Kayum: You mention in your acknowledgements that the stories in this collection took more than 10 years to write. Can you tell me a little about your journey with these stories and the collection’s journey to publication?

Anu Kandikuppa: I started experimenting with writing fiction in 2012. I have an engineering and consulting background, but I had done a little bit of writing way back when I lived in India. I used to publish humor essays and personal essays in one of the newspapers. I wasn’t thinking about fiction writing then, but there was definitely a pull there. Eventually I did an MFA, and I finished around 2015. And during the MFA I started writing some of these stories. About five of them were in my thesis. I wasn’t really thinking about a collection then. The way the MFA program runs, you’re learning by writing short stories. I had six or so when I started seeing a theme and a pattern there. Even then I don’t think I was writing toward a collection. They just came from the same well of feeling, and that brought them together naturally.