Tanaïs Nandini Islam is the New York-based author of the critically-acclaimed novel Bright Lines (Penguin 2015), which was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, the Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize, and was the inaugural selection of the First Lady of NYC's Gracie Book Club, as well as Bustle's American Woman Book Club.
Her work is multi-disciplinary, dynamic, intersectional, and feminist. Over the course of her career, she has worked as a community organizer, a domestic violence court advocate, a probations intake officer, and youth arts educator. While researching Bright Lines, she studied perfumery, amassing a library of 500 fragrant raw materials, which led to the creation of Hi Wildflower, independent beauty & fragrance house.
While at MacDowell, she was at work on her second novel, Stellar Smoke, and completed a draft of her third book, In Sensorium, a collection of essays about scent, sensuality, and girlhood in America.
