Book Launch: Maya Chhabra, "Chiara in the Dark"
Date and time
Location
Online event
Book launch for Maya Chhabra's "Chiara in the Dark", a YA book about OCD told in verse, with the author in conversation with Leah Bobet
About this event
Join us for the launch of Maya Chhabra's newest novel, Chiara in the Dark! This powerful YA novel, told in verse, follows Indian-Italian figure skater Chiara as she grapples with the challenge of getting help for obsessive-compulsive disorder for the first time. We're thrilled to have the author joining us, in conversation with award-winning author and editor Leah Bobet, on Friday, April 1st, at 7 PM. The event is free and online, captioned, and open to all. Registration via Eventbrite is required.
About the book:
Chiara is gliding through her senior year with ease, with a great babysitting job, a loyal best friend, a loving Indian-Italian immigrant family, and a shot at the summer ice-skating camp of her dreams. Then, out of nowhere, she starts having violent and unwanted thoughts and obsessions. The thoughts won’t leave Chiara alone, making her wonder if she’s a bad, violent person. Chiara’s parents urge her to get help through therapy, but the idea of talking about her disturbing thoughts out loud is unthinkable. As Chiara opens up to therapy, she sees a glimmer of hope that she can have her life back. But her dark thoughts lie just beneath the surface, threatening to take it all away.
About our guests:
Maya Chhabra is a current student in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program and a graduate of Georgetown University. Her first novel, Stranger on the Home Front, was released in 2021. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in anthologies and magazines, including Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and PodCastle. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife. Visit her online at https://mayachhabra.com or on Twitter as @MChhabraAuthor.
Novelist, editor, and critic Leah Bobet's novels have won the Sunburst, Copper Cylinder, and Aurora Awards, been Ontario Library Association's Best Bets, and shortlisted for the Andre Norton Award. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple Year's Best anthologies and is taught in high school and university classrooms in Canada, Australia, and the US, and her poetry appears in both speculative and literary journals. She was a founding editor at Abyss & Apex, editor of Ideomancer Speculative Fiction, and guest poetry editor for Reckoning: creative writing on environmental justice's 2021 issue. She lives in Toronto, where she makes jam, builds civic engagement spaces, and plants both tomatoes and trees. Visit her at www.leahbobet.com.
