Prasanthi Ram

Prasanthi Ram

Singapore

About

Prasanthi Ram is a Singaporean writer of Tamil descent and a lecturer in creative writing at Nanyang Technological University. She completed her PhD in creative writing at the university, and her academic work has helped shape her approach to fiction and storytelling. Ram made her literary debut with Nine Yard Sarees: A Short Story Cycle (2023), a collection of eleven interconnected stories portraying the lives of nine women from a Tamil Brahmin family across several generations. The book explores migration, cultural identity, patriarchy, caste, sexuality, and the evolving experiences of the Tamil diaspora. It won the 2024 Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction, bringing Ram significant recognition in Singapore’s literary community. Her short fiction has appeared in Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Five and Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet. She has also contributed personal essays to collections including What We Inherit: Growing Up Indian and Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore. In 2020, Ram co-founded Mahogany Journal, an online literary journal that supports and publishes South Asian writers in Singapore, where she serves as fiction editor. Through her writing and editorial work, she seeks to bring greater visibility to Tamil characters and the diverse experiences of the Singaporean Indian community.

Books on TheBookRoads

All genres Literary Fiction Fiction Short Stories
All themes Family & Heritage
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1
Nine Yard Sarees
Nine Yard Sarees
Nine Yard Sarees is a collection of eleven interconnected stories following nine women across three generations of the Srinivasan family, a Tamil Brahmin family whose history stretches from India to Singapore, Australia, and the United States. Spanning nearly seven decades, from 1950 to 2019, the stories explore how migration, tradition, and changing social expectations shape women’s lives. At the heart of the collection are women negotiating the demands of family and community while trying to define themselves on their own terms. Raji, the family matriarch, struggles with life away from her homeland, while her daughter Padma attempts to raise her children according to traditional values. In the younger generation, Keerthana approaches marriage and the prospect of wearing the nine-yard saree, a garment symbolizing womanhood and cultural heritage. Through stories of love, grief, prejudice, and personal transformation, Ram examines the tensions between tradition and independence. She addresses patriarchy, caste discrimination, sexuality, and the complexities of belonging in the diaspora. Moving between generations and continents, the collection celebrates women’s resilience and solidarity while revealing the emotional costs of preserving cultural identity in a changing world. The book won the 2024 Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction.
2023 Singapore
Country
Singapore
Asia
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