Vyshali Manivannan (she/they) is a writer, educator, and creative-critical scholar with dynamic chronic illnesses: namely, fibromyalgia (FMS), myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), and mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Writing, and Cultural Studies at Pace University – Pleasantville and holds a Ph.D. in Communication, Information, and Media from Rutgers University and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts.

Her critical and creative-critical scholarship and performance art primarily focus on discourses around chronic pain and fatigue, Euro-Western ocularcentrism and the logic of cure, and pain, language, and academic style. Her research and teaching interests include disability studies, electronic literature, graphic novels, war and trauma narratives, consumer media culture, and trolling culture. In her creative work, she gravitates to creative nonfiction; game design; multimodal, multisensory, interactive composition; mixed-media composition; and lyric forms to explore issues of embodiment, queerness, hybridity, access, and intergenerational trauma stemming from the Tamil genocide.

Vyshali is the author of Invictus, a YA science-fiction novel she wrote when she was 15, and she has contributed to numerous open-educational resources and open-access scholarly and literary journals, such as Spark, the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, Digital Health, Fibreculture, The Paris Review online, The New York Times, and DIAGRAM. Her born-digital dissertation, This is About the Body, the Mind, the Academy, the Clinic, Time, and Pain, is partially available online. Her work has also appeared in traditional journals like Fourth Genre, Consequence, and Black Clock, and in stage adaptations like Yoni Ki Baat 2010.

Vyshali has nearly 20 years of teaching experience. She previously taught as an Adjunct Instructor at Rutgers University, Baruch College, Montclair State University, the New School, Yeshiva College, and City College of Technology. She also created and taught 8th-12th grade curricula in English, Creative Writing, and Academic Writing at the Countee Cullen Community Center site of the Harlem Children’s Zone. She also taught University Writing in Columbia University’s summer bridge program for under-resourced incoming freshmen for several years.

Outside of teaching and writing, Vyshali also engages in advocacy efforts by organizations like People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) and MEAction and works on issues of access and equitable labor, particularly for disabled students and NTT faculty. She has volunteered with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and created syllabus policies and toolkits regarding COVID-19 and other illnesses, OpenAI and writing, and accommodations applications. She has also written antiracist and feminist statements, access guides, faculty labor guidelines, and digital codes of conduct.

She has won awards for her research, creative writing, and teaching, including the Technology Innovator Award (2023) awarded by the 7Cs Committee; the Michelle Kendrick Award for Outstanding Digital Production/Scholarship (2023); the Rutgers University School of Graduate Studies Distinguished Scholarly Achievement Award (2022); and the Kairos Award for Research in the Graduate Student/NTT Faculty Category (2020). Her teaching has been recognized through Pace University’s LGBTAQ Educator of the Year Award (2021); ; the Honoring Excellence Faculty Award at Pace University (2020); and the April “Faculty of the Month” (2019) student-nominated campus award for teaching and mentorship. She was nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize in Nonfiction and received a Notable Mention in Best American Essays 2015. On the public-facing community level, she won first prize in the disabled word invention contest #BorgDiem for the concept misability.

Vyshali lives with her neurotic Siberian tabby cat, Athena, and has over 20 body modifications, including tattoos, scarifications, and piercings. She is represented by Mary Krienke at Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.

Photo: Sara Fuller