Cheeni Rao

Cheeni Rao is a graduate of the University of Chicago as well as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is a winner of the Nick Adams Award for fiction and the Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prize for fiction, and has had many of his stories published in nationally distributed journals. His three plays, “Phone,” “Broken Circle,” and “Islands,” were produced by The Asian Theatre Project, and he has had a screenplay optioned by a major Hollywood studio. He is the founder and owner of The Iowa Book Doctors, an editing firm that edits and ghostwrites manuscripts for publication and conducts online one-on-one instruction on the craft of writing.  His book In Hanuman’s Hands (HarperOne) goes on sale in Spring of 2009.

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Biography/History

Body, Mind, and Spirit

Hinduism

In Hanuman’s Hands

A Memoir

Talking Points

Cheeni Rao is a graduate of the University of Chicago as well as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is a winner of the Nick Adams Award for fiction and the Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prize for fiction, and has had many of his stories published in nationally distributed journals. His three plays, Phone, Broken Circle, and Islands, were produced by The Asian Theatre Project, and he has had a screenplay optioned by a major Hollywood studio. He is the founder and owner of The Iowa Book Doctors, an editing firm that edits and ghostwrites manuscripts for publication and conducts online one-on-one instruction on the craft of writing.

Description

Hitting rock bottom as a homeless drug addict, Cheeni Rao returns to his family to find the door locked. Behind it he hears his Indian immigrant mother sobbing, “I can do nothing for you. You are now in Hanuman’s hands.” Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, is his last resort.

In Hanuman’s Hands is a gritty, hauntingly beautiful memoir by a unique, new voice from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Srinivas “Cheeni” Rao is a young man born to a long line of Indian Hindu priests, who faced with the freedoms and temptations of life on an elite New England college campus, spirals down into a hedonistic nightmare of drugs, sex and crime. On his long journey to recovery and rehabilitation, he is magically guided by visions of Hanuman, the trickster monkey god of the Indian epic poem, the Ramayana.

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