Chandra Prasad is a writer and editor with an established track record in both fiction and nonfiction.

Most recently, Prasad completed a novel based on the life of Amelia Earhart. It is called Breathe the Sky. Wally Lamb, author of The Hour I First Believed, writes that Breathe the Sky "is, by turns, an adventure story, a love story, and a cautionary tale about the double-edged sword of modern American celebrity. From lift-off to landing, [it] is a novel that soars.”

Prasad is also the author of On Borrowed Wings, a novel set in Depression-era Connecticut. On Borrowed Wings is about a quarryman’s daughter who attends a prestigious university in 1936 in the guise of a boy. The book is part social history, part adventure tale, and part coming-of-age story. Lively and fast-paced, it addresses several critical issues, including women's rights, the eugenics movement, and anti-Semitism—issues that resonate today. Thoroughly researched and packed with period detail, On Borrowed Wings also offers a sly peep into a bygone era of a university, and a country, on the brink of inalterable change. National Public Radio’s Faith Middleton hails the novel a multi-tiered story of “race, class, gender, and family—though you so root for the young woman’s dream that you don’t notice until the novel is done. That’s great, believable storytelling.”

A graduate of Yale, Prasad is the originator and editor of, and a contributor to, Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience, which was published to international acclaim by W.W. Norton. A combination of Indian, Italian, Swedish, and English, Prasad drew inspiration from her own multiracial identity in assembling the book, which includes material by Danzy Senna, Rebecca Walker, Ruth Ozeki, and Mat Johnson, among other prominent and emerging writers. Bliss Broyard calls the anthology “nuanced, thoughtful, and deeply human.”

Always interested in issues of identity, Prasad decided that the circus, with its motley cast and meritocratic pecking order, would be the perfect setting for another one of her books: Death of a Circus. Before writing Prasad spent months researching traveling shows of the early twentieth century and speaking with circus historians and present-day performers. The result, says Tom Perrotta, is a work of fiction brimming with “Dickensian verve, a keen eye for historical detail, and lots of heart.” Booklist says the book is "richly textured" and "packed with glamour and grit."

Prasad penned the popular career guide Outwitting the Job Market and scores of articles on diversity and the workplace. Her works have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Week, Teen Voices, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. In addition, her short stories have been printed in numerous literary forums, including Faultline, the University of California at Irvine's Pushcart prize-winning journal.