Mai Sennaar

Nov 26, 2024 | frieze.com | Mai Sennaar

Last April, mere weeks before it was due to open, the 2024 Dak’Art Biennial was abruptly postponed due to unprecedented political protests surrounding the Senegalese presidential election. Despite this inauspicious start, when the biennial finally opened earlier this month, it presented a nuanced account of celebration and artistic resilience in a new political landscape.

Oct 8, 2024 | centerforfiction.org | Rita Bullwinkel |Ruthvika Rao |Mai Sennaar |Clare Sestanovich

Vijaya and Sree are the daughters of the Deshmukhs of Irumi. Hailing from a lineage of ancestral aristocrats, their family’s social status and power over villagers on their land is absolute. Krishna and Ranga, brothers, are the sons of a widowed servant in the Deshmukh household. When Vijaya and Krishna meet, they forge an intense bond that is beautiful and dangerous.

Sep 30, 2024 | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Mai Sennaar

Early last fall, after spending a couple years abroad, I returned to the DMV in preparation for the release of my first novel, They Dream in Gold. I flew home to Maryland a few days after submitting the book’s third round of edits. My travels had enriched my life (and my novel) in demonstrable ways, and I’d hardly felt any homesickness while overseas. So it was strange to feel relief at Columbia’s Lake Kittamaqundi — some sense that I’d arrived where I most belonged.

Jul 30, 2024 | nytimes.com | Mai Sennaar

THEY DREAM IN GOLD, by Mai SennaarBefore I'd read a word of Mai Sennaar's extraordinary debut novel, "They Dream in Gold," I was struck by her opening author's note. In it, Sennaar describes a real-life dust storm in the Sahara whose effects were felt as far as Britain.

Jul 30, 2024 | lithub.com | Mai Sennaar

Unable to sleep, I go out on the veranda. I am swinging in the dark on a mountain in the Virgin Islands. It is my last day in the Caribbean and my novel still refuses to be done. Article continues after advertisementFrom the Baths—the clear-water caves in Virgin Gorda to the ruins of sugar plantations across Tortola, I have been immersed in the history that I expected to inspire my novel, but nearly a month has passed, and nothing fresh or coherent enough for the page has emerged.