About

Chaya Nautiyal Murali was born in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India, and  immigrated with her family to the United States at age four, eventually settling in Houston, Texas. She has spent most of her life thinking about identity, inheritance, and family, which is reflected both in her work as a genetics physician, and in her writing as a personal essayist. She published her first personal essay as a college student, and has continued writing creatively throughout her medical training and early career.

 

Chaya's work has appeared in Barely South Review, Crack the Spine, SFWP Quarterly, Aster(ix), and elsewhere. Two of her essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2018, she attended the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, where she was a finalist for the Bread Loaf Katherine Bakeless Nason award in nonfiction. She completed a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in October 2023, and attended the Sewanee Writers' Conference for nonfiction in 2024. She is at work on her first collection of essays and thinking about her first memoir.