Katie Kitamura
Bestselling Author of Intimacies
Tara Menon
Associate professor of English at Harvard University and author of Under Water
“To read literature is to hold questions up to the light ”
Photo credit: Sharona Jacobs
Tara Menon was born in India, grew up in Singapore, spent a decade in New York, and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she is an Associate Professor of English at Harvard University. She is also the author of the celebrated literary fiction novel Under Water. Menon’s writing, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and more. A compelling speaker, Menon explores new arguments about important texts and topics, leaving audiences with a deeper understanding of literature and the world.
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About Tara Menon
Tara Menon is an Associate Professor of English at Harvard University and the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel Under Water. Her writing has appeared in several publications including The New York Times, Bookforum, The Paris Review, and Public Books. A provocative speaker beloved by student audiences, Menon delves into complex social and political issues in literature and emphasizes the importance of reading.
Menon’s remarkable debut novel Under Water was named a most anticipated book of the year by TIME, NPR, Oprah Daily, Kirkus Reviews, Debutiful, and more. Under Water is an intense, atmospheric story about friendship and grief, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic events that also explores ecological change and natural disasters. Called “a novel of remarkable delicacy and power” by bestselling author Katie Kitamura, Under Water is a meditation on loss, a tribute to our dying oceans and forests, and a love letter to the disappearing coral reefs.
A dynamic and thought-provoking speaker, Menon teaches audiences how to use literature to better understand the world around them. By sharing how to understand the politics of a work, Menon emphasizes how reading novels allows us to practice asking the questions that would be used to think through complex social and political issues around us. Audiences leave her talks with a richer understanding of literature and new language to express ideas that they may once have found difficult to articulate.
Additionally, Menon is the co-editor of the Literary Fiction section of Public Books. Her academic work has appeared in Narrative, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, and Studies in the Novel. Her first academic monograph Speaking Parts: Conversation, Character, and Social Worlds, will be published by Princeton University Press in September 2026.
Menon was born in India and grew up in Singapore. She holds a BA in English from Columbia University and a MA, MPhil, and PhD in English from New York University. From 2019 to 2023, she was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. After spending a decade in New York, she now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Praise for Tara Menon
Praise for Under Water
[A] luminous debut that moves with the speed of a single held breath… [The] novel shows how grief behaves like weather, returning without warning and changing the air in a room…What lingers is not disaster, but devotion: love refusing to sink.
— Oprah DailyEvocative…a contemplative, slow-burning novel that invites readers to swim in its emotional undercurrents.
— Boston.comStunning and complex; a book that admits no easy answers but also refuses to avoid the hard questions.
— Kirkus, STARRED reviewMenon’s dynamic debut…is sure to pull at the reader’s heartstrings.
— Publishers Weekly“Stunning. . . . Menon’s mesmerizing descriptions. . .are best read slowly and savored. . . a memorable addition to the literature of grief, combining the captivating force of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking with the mysteriousness of Namwali Serpell’s The Furrows.
— BookPageA novel of remarkable delicacy and power, Under Water is about grief, friendship, home, and longing. Menon writes exquisite sentences, sensual and particular, each containing an entire world.
— Katie Kitamura, author of Audition and Intimacies -
Books by Tara Menon
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Featured Title
Under Water
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, NPR, OPRAH DAILY, KIRKUS REVIEWS, DEBUTIFUL AND MORE!
An intense, atmospheric novel about the devastating power of friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic events
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