Rakesh Satyal is an American
novelist, best known for his
Lambda Literary Award-winning
debut novel ''Blue Boy''.
["Gaga at the Gala: Rakesh Satyal Wins Lambda Literary Award, Sings About It"]
. brooklyntheborough.com, June 2010. ''Blue Boy'' won the 2009 Prose/Poetry Award from the Association of Asian American Studies and was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Edmund White Debut Fiction Award and Satyal was a recipient of a 2010 Fellowship in Fiction from the
New York Foundation for the Arts.
Early life
Rakesh Satyal was born and raised in
Cincinnati,
Ohio. His parents, Vinay and Lalita Satyal, emigrated to the United States from India. He has a
fraternal twin brother, Vikas. His older brother is stand-up comedian
Rajiv Satyal
Rajiv Satyal (born 1976) is an American comedian. He is the first person ever to perform standup comedy on all seven continents.
Early life
Rajiv Satyal was born in Hamilton, Ohio to Indian parents. He graduated from Fairfield High School in 1 ...
. Satyal attended Fairfield Senior High School. Satyal graduated with an A.B. in comparative literature from Princeton University in 2002 after completing a 272-page-long senior thesis, titled "Dissonance (A Novel)," under the supervision of Lynn Tillman and
David Ebershoff. He was a member of the a cappella group the Princeton Nassoons.
[Princeton Nassoons] His freshman year, he created the celebration that occurs each semester on Dean's Date, where students cheer on their classmates to turn in their written work on time.
Career

With the exception of a few years in the world of branding, Satyal has worked in book publishing since 2001, when he was an intern at
Random House. He worked at what was formerly known as the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, then
HarperCollins, then
Atria Books, a division of
Simon & Schuster. He is currently an Executive Editor at HarperOne, a division of
HarperCollins. Over the course of his career, he has worked with such authors as
Tori Amos,
Clive Barker,
Common
Common may refer to:
Places
* Common, a townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland
* Boston Common, a central public park in Boston, Massachusetts
* Cambridge Common, common land area in Cambridge, Massachusetts
* Clapham Common, originally com ...
,
Daniel Lavery,
Janet Mock,
Terry Castle,
Paulo Coelho,
Joey Graceffa,
Vestal McIntyre
Vestal McIntyre is an American author currently based in the UK. He was born in Nampa, Idaho, and educated at Tufts University, Massachusetts. His first collection of short stories, ''You Are Not the One'', was published by the independent Scotti ...
,
Armistead Maupin,
Michael Arceneaux,
Chasten Buttigieg
Chasten James Glezman Buttigieg ( ; born June 23, 1989) is an American teacher, writer, and LGBTQ rights advocate. He is married to Pete Buttigieg, the current U.S. secretary of transportation. He was an advisor, spokesperson, and social media ...
,
Anuradha Roy Anuradha may refer to:
Film
* ''Anuradha'' (1940 film), a 1940 Bollywood film
* ''Anuradha'' (1960 film), a 1960 Hindi-language film
* ''Anuradha'' (1967 film), a 1967 Indian Kannada film
* ''Anuradha'' (2014 film), a 2014 Bollywood drama fil ...
,
Rahul Mehta
Rahul Mehta is an American author. He was born and raised in West Virginia, and his work focuses on the experience of being queer and South Asian. Mehta is the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Debut Gay Fiction and the Asian American Litera ...
,
Ann Powers, and
Paul Rudnick.
''
Blue Boy'' was published in 2009. Satyal's second novel, ''No One Can Pronounce My Name'', was published in May 2017 by
Picador USA. His work has also appeared in the anthologies ''The Man I Might Become'', ''Fresh Men 2'', ''The Letter Q'', and ''Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey''. Satyal sometimes performs in New York City as a singer. His cabaret act has been mentioned in ''
The New Yorker'', the ''
New York Observer
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
'', and ''
Page Six''. He also garnered attention for his acceptance speech at the Lambda Literary Awards gala, which he sang to the tune of
Lady Gaga's "
Bad Romance".
[
His novel 'Blue Boy' is being turned into a film by the actor, comedian, and writer Nik Dodani. His novel ''No One Can Pronounce My Name'' is being made into a film by Christine Vachon of Killer Films.
]
Personal life
Satyal lives in New York City with his husband, John Maas, a literary agent. His brother is comedian Rajiv Satyal
Rajiv Satyal (born 1976) is an American comedian. He is the first person ever to perform standup comedy on all seven continents.
Early life
Rajiv Satyal was born in Hamilton, Ohio to Indian parents. He graduated from Fairfield High School in 1 ...
. He has a fraternal twin, Vikas Satyal.
Bibliography
* ''Blue Boy'' (2009)
* ''No One Can Pronounce My Name (novel)
''No One Can Pronounce My Name'' is the second novel written by Rakesh Satyal.
Publication
The first edition hard cover of ''No One Can Pronounce My Name'' was published in May 2017 by Picador. Paperback version of the book was published in Ma ...
'' (2017)
See also
* Indians in the New York City metropolitan area
* LGBT culture in New York City
New York City is home to one of the largest LGBTQ populations in the world and the most prominent. Brian Silverman, the author of ''Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day,'' wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most power ...
* List of LGBT people from New York City
New York City is home to one of the largest LGBT populations in the world and the most prominent. Brian Silverman, the author of ''Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day,'' writes that the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most ...
* Literature review
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Satyal, Rakesh
21st-century American novelists
American male novelists
American gay writers
Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction winners
American male writers of Indian descent
Living people
Writers from Cincinnati
American LGBT novelists
21st-century American male writers
Novelists from Ohio
1980 births
American twins