Set on the human-brutalized prairies of Maharashtra and Colorado, A Catalog of Future Mercies (Graywolf Press, 2026) performs as a séance between the land, the author, and her late grandmother, Dayawati, whose name means “full of mercy.”

Chopra notes: “As a dancer and a survivor of abuse, my communion with Dayawati—who died when I was an infant—has been characterized by a desire to observe her body in motion, to witness how she might have moved with and despite decades of abuse. In one of the book’s many interdisciplinary gestures, I began to digitally animate photos of Dayawati; I then composed these animations into short films set to text from the book.”

Dayawati, Full Of Mercy (Serena Chopra, 2021)