“Lion” by Nandini Bhattacharya in Issue 46 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
That elusive subtle moment when reality slides in to the subconscious, the mysterious, the uncanny—and vice-versa—fascinates me in life and in fiction. In “Lion” I was attempting a treatment of such sublime subliminally, dream states that suddenly declare themselves more “Real” than the “real,” in whatever realm called “consciousness” we wander, as people, as writers.
What was the most difficult part of writing this story?
I struggled with whether to call the dream a dream, or to let the shock of the cut be part of the reader’s delight.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Probably George Saunders. Because he’s amazing, fabulous, unfathomably brilliant, yet sounds like a kind and unassuming human being.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
Now, a speculative fable called Kikki, Kali, Uma about a twelve-year-old girl who, after an accident that “unwomans” her in a broad sense, receives unexpected deus ex machina help to craft an unusual life.
Next is something—and I don’t know if it’s a novel or something else—called Snakebite, a re-telling of an Indian folktale where the gods misbehave, humans bravely persist, corporate clout is flouted, and basic human love and loyalty prevail even if the gods like to kill humans for their sport.
Our thanks to Nandini for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this story. Read “Lion” here.
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Nandini Bhattacharya’s first novel Love’s Gardenwas published in 2020. Her short story collection Somewhere, Once, Now: Stories is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press, and her second novel Fake Lives is forthcoming from Roundfire Books. Shorter work is published in The Common, Cincinnati Review, Bellevue Literary Review, River Styx, Rumpus,Chicago Quarterly Review,Notre Dame Review, PANK, Oyster River Pages, The Bombay Review, and more. She has attended the Bread Loaf Writers Workshop, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale Artists Residency, VONA, and others. Her awards and honors include a Best Microfiction 2026 nomination, a Pushcart nomination for her short story “After the House Burned Down” (2021), and first runner-up for the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction contest (2017-2018). She is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.