2021 Dublin Literary Award Finalist
2021 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist for Transgender Fiction
2020 Toronto Book Awards Finalist

“The Subtweet is affecting, unnerving, empowering, and often truly LOL.” — Foreword Reviews, starred review

“A beautifully crafted novel about race, music, and social media.” — Booklist

Includes an exclusive free soundtrack

Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya’s second novel is a no-holds-barred examination of the music industry, social media, and making art in the modern era, shining a light on the promise and peril of being seen.

Indie musician Neela Devaki has built a career writing the songs she wants to hear but nobody else is singing. When one of Neela’s songs is covered by internet artist RUK-MINI and becomes a viral sensation, the two musicians meet and a transformative friendship begins. But before long, the systemic pressures that pit women against one another begin to bear down on Neela and RUK-MINI, stirring up self-doubt and jealousy. With a single tweet, their friendship implodes, a career is destroyed, and the two women find themselves at the centre of an internet firestorm.

Vivek Shraya is the author of the young-adult collection God Loves Hair, the novel She of the Mountains, the poetry book even this page is white, and the children's picture book (with Rajni Perera) The Boy & the Bindi (all published by Arsenal Pulp Press), as well as I'm Afraid of Men and What I Love About Being QUEER. She is editor of the Arsenal Pulp Press imprint VS. Books, dedicated to work by young black, Indigenous, and writers of colour. Vivek was the 2014 recipient of the Steinert & Ferreiro Award for leadership in Toronto's LGBTQ community, the recipient of Anokhi Media's inaugural Most Promising LGBTQ Community Crusader Award in 2015, a 2015 Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award finalist, and a 2015 recipient of the Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize Honour of Distinction. Originally from Edmonton, she now lives in Calgary, where she is an assistant professor in the University of Calgary's Department of English.

Vivek Shraya's profile page

• Nominated, Lambda Literary Award
• Long-listed, Dublin Literary Award
• Long-listed, Toronto Book Award
• Nominated, The Queerties

“A beautifully crafted novel about race, music, and social media … In this timely novel, Shraya speaks to a modern audience with bold cultural insight, confronting the difficulties of being a brown artist and the drastic impact social media can have on pop culture.” — Booklist

“With the freedom that fiction provides, Shraya took The Subtweet deep into the topics of hate-liking, social media friendships, and Internet celebrities. And the plot, as fast-paced as life on the Internet, shows clearly the way that jealousy and obsession can take shape within the open borders of the online world.” — NPR Books

“Vivek Shraya’s The Subtweet is a sharp, encompassing story … A piercing satire played out against diverse creative energies, The Subtweet is affecting, unnerving, empowering, and often truly LOL.” — Foreword Reviews, starred review

“It is clear that Shraya is pouring everything she’s learned from years of writing and making music into a text that combines rhythm and deft technique in bitingly original ways. It is equally clear in The Subtweet that Shraya is using the vehicle of fiction to hash out many of the valid frustrations she’s accumulated over years of navigating the Canadian culture scene … Shraya skilfully shows this complexity by depicting characters who are frequently ridiculous, petty, and even malicious, while simultaneously pushing readers to understand the underlying systemic factors driving their frustrating actions.” — Quill & Quire

“Writing with all the zippy thrill of good gossip.” — O, Oprah Magazine