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| Ankur Thakkar (photo: Natasha Jahchan) |
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Ankur Thakkar is a writer and multimedia artist whose stories have appeared in ø, [PANK], and TriQuarterly. He was a 2025 Sewanee Writers' Conference Scholar and his artwork has been exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo and La Friche la Belle de Mai. Blow Yourself Up (TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press, September 15, 2026) is his first novel, a literary reckoning with the creator economy and a moving portrayal of love across cities and screens.
Handsell readers your book:
Blow Yourself Up will appeal to anyone who thinks the Internet was mostly a mistake. It's a love story.
On your nightstand now:
I'm reading Good News by Alexa Yasemin Brahme. It's an engrossing debut novel with incredible pacing and rich characters. I don't necessarily care about the art world but I love visual art and artists. Brahme brilliantly depicts all three.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I was obsessed with the Mahabharata and constantly reread the iconic graphic series by Amar Chitra Katha. It's referenced in Blow Yourself Up, and Arjun is named after the epic's emo warrior-prince.
Your top five authors:
Incredibly difficult, but I'll name some of my favorite authors currently working: Arundhati Roy, Catherine Lacey, Mohsin Hamid, Hari Kunzru, and Isabella Hammad.
Book you've faked reading:
I'm a completionist to a fault. At the expense of my relationships, fitness, and earning potential.
Book you're an evangelist for:
This year it's Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Not that it needs me by any means, but people are wary of thick classics and can benefit from a gentle push into the water. I read it last year for the first time and admired the digressive propulsion of the plot. It's an Internet novel written almost 200 years ago.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Coin by Yasmin Zaher. Perfect cover. Perfect novel. I will read everything Zaher writes from here on out.
Book you hid from your parents:
Is that a thing? In Hindu culture, books are treated like gods. Anything with text on it, actually. And even though I'm an atheist, if a book or a piece of paper grazes my foot, to this day, I touch it with my right hand and then touch my forehead. All of which to say, my books were proudly displayed.
Book that changed your life:
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy blew me away when I was in college. Still does. The way Roy dances around the rules of language made me understand that fiction could, and should, feel like play. I have to name one more, and it's a problematic fave, but The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis deeply affected the way I constructed sentences. I'm sure you could find some of its bones in my novel.
Favorite line from a book:
"We are all migrants through time." --Mohsin Hamid
Exit West is one of my favorite novels, and isolating any of its lines doesn't do justice to the emotional avalanche Hamid patiently builds then unleashes in this story.
Five books you'll never part with:
I'm going to name the books I reread most often:
Oblivion by David Foster Wallace
Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Normal People by Sally Rooney
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
None. I'm such an evangelist for rereading because my love for a text deepens and grows whenever I return to it.