Ruthvika Rao is a 2022 graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow and recipient of the Henfield Prize in fiction and the Stanley fellowship for international research. She was born in Warangal district, Telangana, and grew up in Hyderabad, India. Her short fiction has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, New Letters, StoryQuarterly, the Antioch Review, Chicago Review and elsewhere.