Book Event: Talking with Boys by Tayyba Kanwal

In collaboration with StoryStudio Chicago, we are very excited to host Tayyba Kanwal for an event celebrating the release of her short story collection, Talking with Boys. For this event, Tayyba will be joined in conversation by Ananda Lima.

In a collection of linked tales filled with irony, humor, and magic, Talking with Boys introduces an unforgettable cast of characters in the Pakistani diaspora in Houston navigating crises of their own making and beyond their control.
Via generations and geographies, the stories expand from Houston into tales from the characters’ pasts in Dubai and Lahore. A community of Pakistani immigrants distract ICE with unlikely bait. A housekeeper in a Dubai mansion plots to liberate her fellow indentured workers. In Lahore, an empty nester finds herself bound by more than a jinxed bracelet. Throughout, Tayyba Kanwal’s remarkable characters navigate economic upheavals, political turmoil, and personal betrayals to pursue love, plot for survival, and play subtle power games to triumph against patriarchal forces of all genders.

Tayyba Kanwal is a Pakistani-American writer, and editor and author of the short story collection, Talking with Boys (Black Lawrence Press, 2026) She serves as Senior Editor at Conjunctions., and as programming director at the literary arts nonprofit, Inprint, in Houston. Her work appears in journals such as Witness Magazine, Meridian and Gulf Coast Journal, and has won awards including the Black Lawrence Press Immigrant Writing Prize and the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program and an MS in Mathematics from the University of Oregon.

Ananda Lima is the author of (Tor) and (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, , Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is a Contributing Editor at Poets & Writers and Program Curator at StoryStudio, Chicago. Craft, her fiction debut, was longlisted for the Story Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, and named Best of the Year by Library Journal, Electric Literature, Debutiful, among others. The New York Times calls it “a remarkable debut that announces the arrival of a towering talent in speculative fiction.”

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For other access needs please email .

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Women & Children First