“She still wonders about flying. Once she dreamed that all the tendons and bones must collapse into nothing and her soul—if she believed in that, she wasn’t sure yet—wisped out of her joints and whistled into the sky. When she’d woken up, she’d watched a blue jay outside her window and convinced herself that the most elegant of birds let go of everything heavy to soar. But sometimes she wonders if flying is the opposite: if it makes a creature so inescapably in their body that they must love it, propel it, bring it with them into miracles.”
Ravishing
Two Indian American siblings fall prey to an insidious beauty tech company whose products drastically change faces, and must decide how willing they are to sacrifice their ethics for acceptance.
Eshani is a writer from Connecticut, living in Philadelphia, PA. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, [PANK], Catapult, Paper Darts, and Joyland, among others. She was a 2021 Mae Fellowship recipient and Semi-Finalist for Key West Literary Seminar’s Marianne Russo Award for Novel In-Progress. She also won the Ryan R. Gibbs Award for Flash Fiction from New Delta Review and was included on the 2017 and 2020 longlists for Wigleaf’s Top 50 Short Fictions. Eshani was a Flash Fiction Co-Editor at Split Lip Magazine. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona. Find her @__eshani and at http://eshani-surya.com.
Eshani was mentored by Maggie Cooper and is now represented by Stephanie Delman. Her debut will be published by Roxanne Gay Books in 2024.