About Me
Gemini Wahhaj is the author of the novel The Children of this Madness (7.13 Books, Fall 2023) and the short-story collection Katy Family (Jackleg Press, Spring 2025). Her fiction is in or forthcoming in Granta, Third Coast, River Styx, Chicago Quarterly Review, Press 53, Allium, Zone 3, Northwest Review, Cimarron Review, the Carolina Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, Chattahoochee Review, Apogee, Silk Road, Night Train, Cleaver, Concho River Review, Scoundrel Time, Arkansas Review, Valley Voices, and other magazines. She has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Houston, where she received the James A. Michener award for fiction (judged by Claudia Rankine) and the Cambor/Inprint fellowship. She is Associate Professor of English at Lone Star College in Houston.
Her short story collection Katy Family was a finalist for the Acacia Fiction Prize by Kallisto Gaia Press and the Hudson Prize by Black Lawrence Press, her novel was a finalist for the Big Moose Prize by Black Lawrence Press, and her YA novel was long listed for the Leap Frog Global Fiction Prize in YA. She received an honorable mention in Atlantic student writer contest 2006, an honorable mention in Glimmer Train fiction contest Spring 2005, Zone 3 Literary Award in 2021, and the prize for best undergraduate fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, judged by Philip Roth. An excerpt of her Young Adult manuscript The Girl Next Door was published in Exotic Gothic Volume 5 featuring Joyce Carol Oates. Formerly, she was senior editor at Feminist Economics and staff writer at the national newspaper The Daily Star in Bangladesh. She has edited articles for the Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Countries and is editor of Cat 5 Review (Cat5review.wordpress.com), a magazine of writing by community college students. She has a master’s degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University and a bachelor degree in materials science and engineering from The University of Pennsylvania, and she has worked at UNDP, CARE, and BRAC.