Nikkitha Bakshani Presents Ghost Chilli, in Conversation with Kat Tang

Join us for a celebration of the US release of Ghost Chilli, Nikkitha Bakshani's acclaimed debut novel, the recipient of a Cosmopolitan Book Award and a finalist for the 2025 New Adult Book Prize. Nikkitha will be in conversation with novelist Kat Tang (Five-Star Stranger). Hosted by Fleet, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, and cosponsored by the Asian American Writers' Workshop, the event will include readings, discussion, mingling, and drink specials. Admission is free.

More about Ghost Chilli:

Muskan has a great life: a creative job in the big city, supportive friends, and no trouble finding first dates. So what if her colleagues don't know she exists, or her friends won't stop lecturing her about the three-year 'situationship' she's in? It's not like she's starving.

But something is wrong, and while the people around her seem to have all the right words, nobody can articulate what they want from each other. As obstacles mount and the easy-going persona Muskan has built starts to crumble, she is forced to face a question that's been quietly burning at the back of her mind: Why did her family move to America so abruptly?

Warm, funny, and sharply observed, Ghost Chilli is a story about trying to find honest relationships in an isolating world, and the weight we unwittingly carry.

'A rich coming-of-age story full of punchy and astute observations about everyday relationships' COSMPOLITAN

'By turns witty, compassionate, and toe-curling. An incredibly astute and propulsive writing of modern relationships, familial, platonic and romantic' SUSANNAH DICKEY

'Ghost Chilli is enjoyably bittersweet, a black comedy that conjures the turbulent twenties in all their isolation and shame' TELEGRAPH

'A kaleidoscopically detailed novel of twenty-first century life, full of human comedy, which finds richness in the quotidian, ephemeral, and overlooked' LUCIE ELVEN

'Exquisite, forensic and tender . . . This book gently brûléed my heart' DOREEN CUNNINGHAM

Nikkitha Bakshani is an Indian-American writer based in London and the author of the debut novel Ghost Chilli, which has been shortlisted for the 2025 New Adult Book Prize. Her writing has been published in the Telegraph, the Paris Review Daily, The Baffler, the Village Voice, and more. She has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths.

Kat Tang is a graduate of Columbia’s MFA program where she taught as an Undergraduate Writing Fellow. Born in China, relocated to Japan, and raised in California, she is fascinated by how we make and fake human connection in a technologically evolving world. Her short stories and graphic narratives have appeared in Electric Literature, The Margins, Pigeon Pages, and elsewhere. She currently lives in New York.

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