Anuja Varghese (she/her) is an award-winning writer of literary fiction, fantasy, and erotica/romance – and combinations of all three – where women of color get leading roles!

Her debut novel A KISS OF CRIMSON ASH is the first book in a lush new romantasy trilogy inspired by medieval India, following a naïve young queen, a heartsick prince, a streetwise thief, and a courtesan with magic in her blood who join forces with an ancient goddess to challenge the empire’s most powerful men. Pitched as Dungeons & Dragons x Bollywood’s most epic love stories, AKOCA is forthcoming in early 2026 with Penguin Random House Canada, Orbit US, and Orbit UK.  

Anuja’s short story collection titled CHRYSALIS (House of Anansi, 2023), explores South Asian diaspora experience through a feminist, queer, speculative lens. In 2023, Chrysalis won the Writer’s Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. In 2024, it was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Fiction.

Anuja’s work has also been featured in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Best Women’s Erotica Volume 6 (Cleis Press, 2020), When Other People Saw Us, They Saw the Dead, (Haunt Press, 2022), Queer Little Nightmares (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022), and Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food (Dundurn Press, 2025).

Anuja is also a professional grant writer and the Fiction Editor with The Ex-Puritan Magazine. She holds a degree in English Literature from McGill University and a Creative Writing Certificate from the University of Toronto.

Anuja lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her partner, two kids, and two cats.