Chrysalis

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. Read more →