Program takes place in person and will not be recorded. 

A coming-of-age novel, The Sea Elephants is about a young man chafing against India’s homophobic culture in the 1980s and 1990s who joins a traveling street theater troupe to outrun the dark secrets of his past. An ode to the redemptive joys of art, this debut novel by Shastri Akella is a celebration of hard-won love of others and for ourselves. 

In-PERSON: $5 for non-members. Free for members. REGISTER HERE. 

Copies of The Sea Elephants are available for purchase through the Mark Twain Store; proceeds benefit The Mark Twain House & Museum. Books will be shipped after the event. We regret that we are NOT able to ship books outside the United States as it is cost-prohibitive to do so. 

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 About the Author: Shastri Akella holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His writing has appeared in Guernica, The Master’s Review, Electric Literature, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, PANK, The Common, and World Literature Review, among others. The Sea Elephants is his debut novel. 

 About the Moderator: Andrea Lawlor teaches creative writing at Mount Holyoke College, is the recipient of a 2020 Whiting Award for Fiction, and has been awarded fellowships by Lambda Literary and Radar Labs. Their publications include a chapbook, Position Papers (Factory Hollow Press), and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Vintage/Knopf).

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Programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are made possible in part by support from CT Humanities; the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts; Ensworth Charitable Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee; the Greater Hartford Arts Council’s United Arts Campaign; The Hartford; The Mark Twain Foundation; The National Endowment for the Humanities; and Travelers.