Rakesh Satyal

in comparative literature from Princeton University in 2002 after completing a 272-page-long senior thesis, titled "Dissonance (A Novel)," under the supervision of Lynn Tillman and David Ebershoff.

[4] His freshman year, he created the celebration that occurs each semester on Dean's Date, where students cheer on their classmates to turn in their written work on time.

He worked at what was formerly known as the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, then HarperCollins, then Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster.

Over the course of his career, he has worked with such authors as Tori Amos, Clive Barker, Common, Daniel Lavery, Janet Mock, Terry Castle, Paulo Coelho, Joey Graceffa, Vestal McIntyre, Armistead Maupin, Michael Arceneaux, Chasten Buttigieg, Anuradha Roy, Rahul Mehta, Ann Powers, and Paul Rudnick.

He also garnered attention for his acceptance speech at the Lambda Literary Awards gala, which he sang to the tune of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance".

From left to right: Xiaolu Guo , Robie Harris , Satyal and Lynne Tillman speaking on the effect of government surveillance on author self-censorship, with other authors at the 2014 Brooklyn Book Festival