The Confines: Stories
The Confines: Stories
by Anu Kandikuppa
Released March 2025
Fresh and provocative, the twelve stories in The Confines deliver us into the cultural expectations, hierarchies, and taboos that define and limit our lives, especially the lives of women. A man's seemingly innocent gesture at a party unravels buried tensions in a marriage. A grieving doctor chronicles the peculiar ailments of an elderly couple yearning for their absent son. A young woman wrestles with her unrequited attraction to a colleague. Set in India and the U.S., these elegant and rare stories explore love, loss, and resilience, uncovering the compromises and hopes that shape our search for happiness.
Anu Kandikuppa (she/her) has worked as an engineer, a software developer, and an economics consultant. The social structures of South Indian families among which she grew up inform the stories in The Confines, her first book. Kandikuppa’s fiction and essays have appeared in Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, The Cincinnati Review, Story, and other journals. Her work has thrice received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthologies and has also been recognized by fellowships and residencies by the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and The Ragdale Foundation. In 2024, she received a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant for Creative Individuals. Kandikuppa holds a Ph.D. in Finance and an MFA in Writing from Warren Wilson College. She lives outside Boston.
