Deepak Unnikrishnan is a writer from Abu Dhabi. His book Temporary People, a work of fiction about Gulf narratives steeped in Malayalee and South Asian lingo, won the inaugural Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, the Hindu Prize and the Moore Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Believer Book Award, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, the Crossword Book Award and appeared on the long list for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the International Dublin Literary Award. The book received critical acclaim by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Economist, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, The Wire, Outlook India, Scroll.in, Open Magazine, Mathrubhumi, Di Repubblica, among others, and was named by Kirkus Reviews, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Hindu as one of the best books of 2017.

At the 57th Venice Biennale, Deepak’s fiction was featured in the written publication of the National Pavilion of the UAE: Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play. His work can also be found in Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, a book project commissioned by the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale, and is forthcoming in the written publication of the UAE National Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture. His voice and work can also be heard on musician Sarathy Korwar’s album ‘More Arriving’.

His essays and fiction have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, The Common, Guernica, Drunken Boat, The State Vol IV: Dubai and Himal Southasian, The Penguin Book of Migration Literature (Penguin Classics, 2019) and Building Sharjah (De Gruyter, 2021), among others and he frequently collaborates with artists and scholars across disciplines. He has been a writer in residence at Sangam House, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Brown University, and was a Margaret Bridgman Fellow in Fiction at Bread Loaf. He currently teaches at NYU Abu Dhabi.

*Bio Photo Credit, Philip Cheung