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Author Biography

Mani is a writer, scientist and professor who retired early from Silicon Valley to Thailan, where he volunteered in the Golden Triangle with the hill-tribe fictionalized in Toxic Spirits. Born in India and educated across four continents, he studied creative writing at Penn (with Carlos Fuentes), at Bread Loaf (with Patricia Hampl) and at Harvard (with Paul Harding). Prior to working in Silicone Valley, he was based in Washington D.C. and Boston as a professor as well as a scientist at a not-for-profit think-tank advising the US government on advanced AI technology. His work affiliations have included Georgetown University (Associate Professor), Yahoo (Senior Director), Cambridge University (Visiting Fellow), MITRE (Senior Principal Scientist), Brandeis University (Visitng Scholar) and MIT (research Affiliate).

Mani's six previous books (two of which have been translated into Japanese)  include The Imagined Moment, on the computing of time in narrative. His stories and essays have been published in 3: AM Magazine, Aeon, Apple Valley Review, Drunken Boat (Finalist for Katherine Anne Porter Prize), PANK, Short Fiction Journal, Slow Trains, Storgy, Unsung Stories, Word RIot and many other venues.

Toxic Spirits is the first volume of a trilogy dealing with the effects of unfettered venality on marginalized Southeast Asian communities. The sequel is devoted to the looting of Asian antiquities, and the final volume is set amid the devastation of reckless dam building along the Mekong River.