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Alum Anuja Varghese highlighted in À¦°óSMÉçÇø News article

Published: 22 January 2024

Anuja Varghese (BA’05) is an award-winning author whose first book, Chrysalis, has been awarded the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers from the Writers’ Trust of Canada and the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. Varghese was recently profiled by À¦°óSMÉçÇø News, where she spoke about her experience studying literature and its wide-ranging impact on both her writing and professional career.

“For her undergraduate studies, she chose English literature at À¦°óSMÉçÇø. “When I first went to visit and walked around the campus, I started to feel like that I belong here. Something about Montreal spoke to me,†she says.

She was enthralled by the books her professors exposed her to. “I got this wide-ranging survey of literature which I had never really looked into,†she says. “What I was reading growing up was mainly popular fiction. I had never really looked into the classics and had never been [immersed in] them until I went to À¦°óSMÉçÇø.â€

Varghese’s À¦°óSMÉçÇø studies also helped pave the way for her subsequent career in arts administration and grant-writing. She had a Work Study position in the Department of English as an administrative assistant. She helped set up meetings and events, worked at Moyse Hall’s box office, and proofread theatrical programs – and realized that there was a lot going on behind the scenes at arts and cultural organizations.

“There [were careers] in arts administration, a field I didn’t even know existed as something concrete, and that gave me the chance to use my writing skills to take me towards that kind of practical career.â€

Once she graduated, she moved to Toronto and began to secure positions in arts organizations working in administration, fundraising, and grant-writing.â€

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