Sohrab Homi Fracis

Who is Sohrab Homi Fracis?

Sohrab Homi Fracis is the first Asian American author to win the Iowa Short Fiction Award, juried by the Iowa Writers' Workshop and described by the New York Times Book Review as "among the most prestigious literary prizes America offers."

Fracis was born in Bombay, India, on August 19, 1958, to Homi and Dinsi Fracis. His sister, Niloufer, was born three years earlier. Having earned an Indian School Certificate at Campion School, Mumbai, he moved across the country for a B.Tech. at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, and then across the world, on a scholarship, for an M.C.E. at the University of Delaware.

As a systems analyst at Fortune 100 companies such as Ford, the only writing he did was handwriting. A handwriting newspaper column in Detroit analyzed his handwriting, after which the columnist shared his cursive sample with an analysts’ club. They declared his evolved Indian style to be a creative one, suggested he had unusual insights, and recommended that he share them. A few years later, while working in Jacksonville, Florida, he accepted his calling to become a writer.

He went back to school for an M.A. in English, with a concentration in creative writing, at the University of North Florida. That made him the rare person with engineering and fiction theses in the United States library system. He taught literature and creative writing at UNF from 1993 to 2003. From 1994 to 2001 he was a fiction and poetry editor at the now defunct State Street Review. In 1999, he became an American citizen. From 2004 to 2008 he was the final judge and presenter of the Page Edwards Short Fiction Award at the also defunct Florida First Coast Writers' Festival. In 2004 he was Visiting Writer in Residence at Augsburg College, Minneapolis. In 2006 he was an artist in residence at Escape to Create, Seaside, Florida. In 2007 he was an artist in residence at the art colony of Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York. And in 2010 Yaddo selected him again. Since 2009, he has led a summer fiction workshop at the UNF Writers Conference. In 2013, he became an Overseas Citizen of India, the closest thing to dual citizenship that India allows.