"Meghana Karanjkar's collection, First Generation, kept me rapt from the first story to the last. The twelve well-crafted stories in the book offer a fascinating smorgasbord. They cover a wide range of issues and sweep a geographic spread from India to the United States. In On the Road, the reader is tossed into the maelstrom of corporate America as experienced by an immigrant caught between responsibility and the tug of family. In the poignant Spilling Over, the reader is transported to a farmer in India, doomed by severe drought and unable to feed his family. In Blurred, Karanjkar focuses on Ethan, a New Yorker confronting the prospect of blindness with both empathy and sensitivity. What binds the diverse stories in this collection are the concepts: universal, humane and immediately recognizable. First Generation will make a worthy addition to any bookshelf."

- Sudha Balagopal, author of Family Matters, forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project, 2027.

“Writer Meghana Karanjkar understands the complexities of the human heart. In these twelve illumatinating stories, set across India and America, she vividly renders setting while also exploring the bonds of love, family, and duty, and the ways caste, culture, and tradition shape our most intimate choices. Her writing is both lyrical and precise, and I found myself drawn into the world and characters she creates, feeling as if they were people I knew and loved too."

- Aimee LaBrie, Award winning author of Rage and Other Cages.

"Karanjkar’s compelling collection of heartfelt short stories runs the gamut from a New York City workaholic who longs for her home in Mumbai; a cab driver in Khandala who takes in a homeless boy; a villager in the northeastern India state of Odisha who will do anything toprovide precious water for his parched family; to a woman in a rural part of Rochester, NY who confronts her son’s infidelity; two college-educated young women who find themselves homeless in San Francisco and a recent newly-wed immigrant from India who yearns for a betterlife with her husband in a New Jersey suburb, to name a few. The author has her finger on the pulse of men and women in dire straits who do anything they can to survive.

Her strengths as a writer lies in imagining an array of intriguing circumstances which she brings to life with élan. Karanjkar’s most captivating stories grow out of her background as a native of India who came to the U.S. in her late twenties. This is an engaging page-turner from a strong new voice in fiction."

- -Hilary S. Kayle, freelance literary fiction reviewer, editor and published author and Ex NBC TODAY.