Anuja Varghese

Anuja Varghese is a Canadian author of South Asian heritage whose debut short story collection Chrysalis (2023) won the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction. The collection weaves together tales of transformation, immigration, and the uncanny, drawing on the language of folklore, body horror, and magical realism to explore the experience of being a woman of colour navigating contemporary Canada. Chrysalis was praised for its formal variety, tonal range, and thematic coherence — each story is concerned with metamorphosis in some form, whether bodily, spiritual, or cultural. Varghese writes with considerable wit and unsettling precision about the violence and beauty of transformation. She is based in Hamilton, Ontario, and Chrysalis is her debut book. The award brought significant attention to her work and established her as a distinctive new voice in Canadian short fiction.