Sumanth Prabhaker
Sumanth Prabhaker was named our featured author this
month for his short story "A
Hard Truth About Waste Management."
Sumanth Prabhaker is 23 years old and lives in Wilmington, North
Carolina with his wife, Emily. He’s currently studying for
an MFA in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington,
and working as the designer and fiction editor for Ecotone,
UNCW’s literary journal. Before that, he worked as a caregiver
for adults with developmental disabilities at a not-for-profit organization
called Little Friends, Inc. Before that, he attended school in Wheaton,
Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Before that, he was very little,
and his parents would position him near a portable Sony cassette
player while they spoon-fed him. This was in New York. The player
was black and silver and had dents all over its case, which was
the sort of plastic composite that retains the oils from grubby
fingerprints for months. It had a handle that could tuck neatly
inside, and a firm stainless steel sheet over the speaker. Sumanth
loved this cassette player, especially when it read to him. His
parents recall it fondly as well, in particular one incident in
which Sumanth memorized the spoken words to a Curious George story
he owned both the book and tapes of and made a big show of reciting
it tapeless from his high chair, turning the pages at all the right
times and inflecting as the narrator had, as if he had decided suddenly
to become literate. For a few minutes, everybody believed him. He
was probably 2 years old at the time, but that sentiment seems to
have governed pretty much everything he’s done since.
He recently completed a collection of stories called Village
of Cults, from which "A
Hard Truth About Waste Management" was taken. Others in
that collection involve a man who lives on the clouds, a fetus who
grows up inside his mother’s uterus, a city run by the Church
of Scientology, and a dying whale. He is presently at work on a
superhero novel and a screenplay for an almost silent film.
Sumanth can be reached at suprabhaker@yahoo.com.
Other publications online:
www.newpantagruel.com/issues/1.3/acronym_titlespiritual_recu.php
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