INHALE — A Novel in Stories by R. Kumra

Author. Witness.

R. Kumra was born and raised near Dearborn, Michigan. Before Inhale, he had never published a word. He works nights at a warehouse in Edison, New Jersey, operating a forklift and listening to his coworkers talk about their children, their ex-wives, their gods. Inhale was first written in the break room on receipt paper and napkins, then retyped into a secondhand laptop missing the letter Q. He does not teach. He has no fellowships, no residencies, no grants. Once he sat in the courtyard of the American University of Beirut while a lecture on the literature of displacement carried through an open window, then bought a coffee from a cart outside and took the service taxi home. He lives in a studio apartment above a laundromat with his mother, who has never read his work but tells everyone at jummah her son is a writer.

She is correct.