My Name is Not Ghost and other things, by Ashwini Gangal

Poetry, prose, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features. This little book has four works of art in it: a poem that rhymes and three short stories. The poem is a lyrical cry against contemporary trends that are robbing the world of its creativity and intuition. Of the stories, one is a piece of creative non-fiction and the other two are works of autobiographical fiction. One of the stories is an ode to the literary genius of Italo Calvino, author of Invisible Cities. My Name Is Not Ghost and other things is Ashwini’s fourth chapbook. Her other titles include Hormonal House (fiction), Yersinia Pestis (poetry), and Lithium and other fairy tales (fiction and poetry). Her work tends to be atmospheric and frank with a florid sense of time and place. Ashwini Gangal is a Mumbai-bred, California-based journalist and fiction writer. About two years ago, a whirlwind romance swept her up from the West Coast of India and tossed her on the West Coast of America. She’s still rubbing her head from the crash, trying to re-orient. Outside of journalism, most of her writing comes from the emotional debris of this move. Migration, she has come to conclude, is a form of insanity.