Saumya Dave

Saumya and I discuss What a Happy Family, wanting to focus on mental health and the ways we do and do not talk about it, how memories are filtered through our own experiences, the origins of the title, balancing two careers and a young child, and much more.

Saumya’s recommended reads are:

What We Carry by Maya Lang
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

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If you enjoyed this episode and want to listen to more episodes, try Liese O’Halloran Schwartz, Jeff Arch, Julie Carrick Dalton, Sanjena Sathian, and Hala Alyan.

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Saumya Dave is a writer, psychiatrist, and mental health advocate.

As a writer, she enjoys exploring the unique dynamics that exist in families. Her second novel, What a Happy Family, will be published in June 2021. Her debut novel, Well-Behaved Indian Women, was featured in The New York Times Book Review, ELLE, Bustle, Buzzfeed, and more. Saumya's essays, articles, and poetry have been in outlets including The New York Times, ABC News, Refinery29, and HuffPost, among others.

Saumya has a passion for women’s mental health and wellness. She and her husband, Samir Sheth, founded thisisforHER, a nonprofit which uses art therapy to improve mental health awareness and education for women and girls in low- and middle-income countries. She is a practicing therapist, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai, where she teaches Narrative Medicine.

Saumya was born in India and grew up in Atlanta. In her seventh-grade journal, she wrote: "I will be a psychiatrist and writer someday". She is a graduate of Georgia Tech and the Medical College of Georgia, where she was an inductee into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. She completed her Psychiatry Residency at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, where she was a Chief Resident and an inductee into the AΩA Medical Honors Society. She completed a Psychoanalytic Fellowship with the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.