Kiran Kaur Saini is a Punjabi-American writer whose work someone recently described as “Buster Keaton meets Kafka.” Finding the world so absurd that the line between the real and the fantastic is obscure, Kiran often straddles that divide in her fiction. Her work has been recommended to the Nebula award reading list and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and regularly appears in both speculative and literary journals. She has taught creative writing to undergraduates and is currently an Associate Editor for Podcastle podcast. A 15-year veteran of the Los Angeles film industry, she stepped away from her career in film production at the start of the pandemic and relocated back east to care for her 88-year-old mom. In her spare time, she practices Szymanowski and Moskowski preludes on her mom’s 1923 reproducing piano and goes kayaking in nearby lakes.