The Sky is Different Here Author Feature

The Sky is Different Here: A Novel

by Shivani Malik

February 17, 2026

Publisher: She Writes Press

Genre: Death, Grief & Bereavement/Relationships/Parenthood & Children’s Fiction

Distribution: Simon & Schuster

For readers of women’s fiction, a debut novel that celebrates the depths of the mother-daughter connection, and having faith in oneself among the hustle and bustle of academic life in the late-aughts.

Eight thousand miles from her Kolkata home, Shani spends most of her time hard at work in the campus biochemistry lab chasing her lifelong dream of becoming a scientist. However, following her dream proves to be anything but easy. As the daily battles and complexities of lab life escalate, she leans into the support of her biggest ally—her mother. Despite now being continents apart, they’ve always shared an unwavering belief in Shani’s dream: a future built on intellectual and financial independence.

But when her mom passes away suddenly, Shani is left adrift. The home they once shared feels foreign; her academic aspirations and the future they had dreamed of together, uncertain. Is she truly driven by genuine passion for science, or has she been trying to escape the expectations placed on her as a woman? Alone, Shani must confront these questions and discover where she truly belongs.

Shani’s journey, a poignant exploration of grief, identity, and belonging, will resonate with anyone who has ever questioned their place in the world.

“Malik authentically captures the financial and immigration stresses of this life, of graduate student poverty, of visas, and green card challenges in America that many foreign students from India have grappled with for decades. “Madhushree Ghosh, author of the 2023 IPPY award-winning memoir Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family

“ . . . Malik brings us a heartfelt story of courage, identity, and finding your place in the world on your own terms.”—Grishma Shah, author of Anagram Destiny

” A lovely study on grief, resilience, friendship, and finding a home in a strange new land.”—Sheri T. Joseph, author of USA Today bestseller Edge of the Known World

“ However, her story reaches far deeper to touch our shared experiences in search of human connection and meaning, regardless of borders, culture or place of origin.”—Steven Wade Adams, DVM, PhD, Scientist, and Humanitarian Photographer

 

Author Interview

You work in a science-based field… Can you share your journey to writing your novel, The Sky Is Different Here?

I came to the US to pursue a PhD in Biochemistry. I was a very driven and curious grad student, dedicated to lab work. The awkward feeling of being in a foreign country, away from my parents and friends, melted away when I processed the X-ray films to read out my experimental results. I would talk to my mother at length about my lab life and the immense pressure of academia and even though she did not understand the specifics, she understood what I was feeling. We dreamed of the day she would come to see me receiving the degree on the stage. When she passed away suddenly in the final year of my grad school, I could not make sense of how she could just be gone! I grew inward and kept working in the lab sometimes 14 hours a day. I told myself that I was working on our shared dream of being the first scientist in the family, but this was also a coping mechanism for not thinking about losing her. I kept going like this for a few years, until I realized that I could not function carrying that packet of unopened grief. I am trained scientist and one of the essential traits of being one is to be at ease working, at least partly, in isolation within one’s own mind and be totally at ease with it. This quality became an impediment to sharing my loss with anyone around me. I felt like I was totally alone in my pain and suffering. I started writing to get these emotions and feelings out. It was a cathartic experience. The more I wrote, the more I read. People’s journeys of struggles, grief, losses, and hopes. These stories became my community. I was no longer alone. Over the years, I shared parts of my writing with friends, which brought me closer to them. I felt like my story could comfort someone, like me, the same way. I decided to turn my writing into a novel to be able to share it with the world.

 

The Sky Is Different Here is an autobiographical novel. Can you tell us a bit about what that means and how you infused your personal experiences into this story?

I am a scientist at heart and love quantifications. The story is 20-30% true in terms of events, 70-80% true in spirit. This means that I have fictionalized parts of the plot, shortened the timelines and taken creative liberty to add a bit of drama to some of the scenes. The essence of the story however is very close to what I experienced as a conflicted, young immigrant looking for a place to belong: who feels she neither is a fit for her native environment with traditional view of women nor in the foreign world of academia with its own complex politics. The character of a daughter coming to terms with losing her very sense of home when she loses her mother and finally finding one by opening about her insecurities to close friends and mentor is inspired from my own experience as a postdoc at UCSF.

 

Grief and loss are a large part of this story. Can you share how you approached writing about such personal topics in a way that feels incredibly universal?

I honestly wrote what I was feeling. At the time, I could not make sense of what was happening, I just wrote them. It was only later, when I began shaping those writings into a novel, that the pieces came together like tesserae in a mosaic.

I also shared several early drafts of my writing with friends and discovered my stories resonated with them even though their personal histories varied greatly from my own. This encouraged me to keep writing. Their insights and feedback, together with guidance from my book coach, also helped me refine my writing and make it accessible to readers of diverse backgrounds.

 

What do you hope readers take from your debut novel?

Reading, like writing, is personal and highly subjective. I hope readers take whatever resonates deepest with them: be it a story of resilience, a journey of exploring who they truly are, acceptance (we keep evolving based on our life experiences, but the foundational values hold our essence), or that we can and should lean into our communities. We’d be surprised how universal many of the struggles we are going through are, even though our details are unique. For me the best thing the reader can take away from the novel is a message of hope. We will all face hardships and struggles but we have to believe that we will find a way through them.

 

Is there any advice you would like to share about utilizing writing to help process hardship and difficult emotions?

 

I think the most important thing is to be honest with our feelings. As a scientist, I did not want to put on paper my irrational thoughts, expectations and hopes that seem unreasonable. It took me a few years to realize that giving space to express myself was the only way to process and reflect on them without judgement, which was a deeply healing process for me. Converting these writings to a publishable form will require level-headed and at times impersonal editing but the first few drafts, I think, should be for the author. Anything else comes later.

 

Finally, what are you working on next!?

I’m working on a book about my relationship with our dog, Freddie. Freddie was—and continues to be—a central part of my healing. I have always longed to find a way to put into words the depth of our connection; to understand how he views our worlds not just as a different species, but how he moves through life as a member of an Indian-American household. I want to explore his place in our extended family; the profound joy he brings with all his quirks and the way he seems to understand us in ways that defy explanation. And woven through it all is the anticipatory grief—the fear of losing him—shaped by my experience of losing my mother.

 

About the Author: 

Shivani Malik was born and raised in India. She immigrated to the US to pursue her PhD and completed her training at Stanford University and University of California San Francisco. This is her debut novel. She currently leads a group of researchers in an oncology focused biotech in San Diego where she resides with her husband and their dog.

 

Shivani Malik

 

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