Speech delivered July 25th, 2025, at the Tell Me Your Story event.
Good evening to all of you. And good morning to my ginger tea—because I’m in California, and it’s still negotiating with my brain. I’m honored to be among such accomplished women.
Once upon a time, I managed server crashes for NASA and the United States Army. My job was to keep high-performance systems up and running.
Today, I tell stories—about women in India who are also trying to hold their worlds together. Somewhere between those two identities—engineer and storyteller—I raised children, questioned patriarchy, and figured out that the strongest signals don’t always come from the loudest voices.
I’m Rasana Atreya—novelist, former techie, and mother to two children and five books. One of those books was written at the invitation of an American crime fiction author, which just goes to show—never underestimate an Indian aunty with a story idea and a solid internet connection.
I’m here today to talk about how digital technology didn’t just help me return to work—it helped me reinvent what work even looks like.
We moved back to India for a few years, and that’s when my writing journey truly began. With two very young children at home, I couldn’t exactly be on call if a server went down at 2 a.m.—unless someone was offering childcare and ginger tea in exchange. So instead, I turned to writing.
My novel began as a reaction to something I kept hearing over and over again:
“What happened to you? How come you’ve become so black?”
In a country where matrimonial ads still ask for “fair” brides, this kind of casual color commentary is practically a greeting. It’s right up there with “What is your pay package?” and “When are you getting married?”—the holy trinity of Indian small talk.
The irony? Both my father and father-in-law were very light-skinned. But I grew up with a dark-skinned mother. Later, I married into a family with a mother-in-law whose complexion mirrored my mother’s. So when I returned to India after living in the U.S., I was stunned at how colorism was not only alive—it was thriving.
Offended on behalf of these two strong women—my mother and my mother-in-law—I began writing. At first, I thought it would be a short story. But the story insisted on growing. It needed space, breath, and depth. And so I kept writing until, finally, a novel emerged.
That unpublished manuscript was shortlisted for a minor British literary prize. Around that time, I was offered a traditional publishing contract—by none other than Urvashi Butalia. Saying no wasn’t easy; had I accepted, she would have been my publisher. I mean, that’s the kind of story that looks great on tote bags at literary festivals.
But self-publishing was still new in India then—and quite technical. As someone with a tech background, I saw it as a challenge. So I declined the offer, rolled up my sleeves, and self-published instead.
Then I wrote about the experience for The Hindu. That article caught the attention of newspapers across the country. Some even sent photographers to my home for full-fledged photo shoots. I discovered that writing a novel is easier than figuring out what to do with your hands in a photo.
And when Amazon launched the Kindle in India, they flew me to New Delhi to be part of the official launch. In the years that followed, I mentored countless other writers, helping them navigate the world of self-publishing—because once you find your voice, you can’t help but help others find theirs too.
I built my own website. I set up email sequences with MailerLite. I integrated Shopify. I’m now preparing a Kickstarter campaign to fund special hardcover editions of my books.
Not because it was easy. But because no one else was going to do it for me. And let’s be honest—if you’ve ever tried changing fonts in MailerLite without sobbing, you’ve earned your digital badge of honor.
The truth is, I never really left technology—I just kept it on a part-time basis. I took on tech contracts now and then to keep my skills sharp. And once we moved back to California, I volunteered every other year at MIT Technology Review’s conference in San Francisco. It was the perfect excuse to sit in on cutting-edge sessions and pretend I understood quantum computing long enough to ask intelligent-sounding questions.
But what pulled at me more deeply was storytelling—especially stories about Indian women who quietly—but firmly—push back against the expectations placed on them. Women who didn’t always see themselves in the books they grew up reading. Women who didn’t always have the words, but knew they had something to say.
Let me share one more story that perfectly captures the intersection of digital technology and personal voice.
A while ago, I hired a professional narrator to record one of my audiobooks. She was amazing—her enunciation, pacing, everything was technically perfect.
But my readers didn’t connect with it. And after a while, I realized why.
It wasn’t my voice. It didn’t have the pauses, the inflections, the rhythm that comes from living the story. From knowing the weight of what’s being said—and what isn’t.
That’s when I turned to voice-cloning AI. I’m now working on narrating my books in my own voice—digitally cloned, yes—but still unmistakably mine.
Because technology shouldn’t erase your voice. It should help you reclaim it.
That’s one of the biggest opportunities digital tools offer women in publishing—especially women of Indian origin. They give us access to platforms that weren’t built for us, but can now be used by us. To bypass gatekeepers. To reach readers directly. To tell our stories in our own way.
But let’s be honest: digital technology can be intimidating. Especially for women returning to the workforce after a break. Or for those of us who were told growing up that technology was someone else’s domain.
I have a master’s degree in electrical engineering. And still, when I reentered the professional world, I hesitated. I second-guessed myself when setting up automated funnels. I watched YouTube tutorials at midnight just to reacquaint myself with “DNS propagation”. At one point I thought I’d broken the internet—but luckily, it was just a browser cache issue.
Not because I couldn’t learn it—but because I’d spent years away from it. And like many women, I’d been conditioned to think that unless we’re experts, we shouldn’t even try.
That, to me, is one of the biggest challenges in this space—not the technology itself, but the confidence gap that keeps women from using it.
In academic publishing especially, this plays out in very specific ways. Women may hesitate to submit to open-access journals, or struggle to promote their work online, or feel overwhelmed by the fast pace of digital platforms. Meanwhile, the algorithms keep rewarding the loudest voices—often not ours.
And yet, I’ve seen how transformative digital tools can be when women embrace them.
I’ve sold books to readers across the world—from Hyderabad to Houston—without a traditional publisher. I’ve reached Indian women in small towns who tell me, “I didn’t know anyone else felt this way.” That—to me—is the power of digital publishing. It’s not just reach—it’s resonance.
For women of Indian origin, the cultural context adds another layer. Many of us are juggling caregiving roles, navigating identity in multiple languages, and trying to explain why our stories matter—even when they don’t fit Western or mainstream Indian publishing molds.
Digital tools help us navigate those spaces. They allow us to self-publish in regional languages. To crowdfund passion projects. To connect directly with niche audiences who do care.
But we need to make these tools more accessible—through mentorship, inclusive design, and community support. Because not every woman has the time, training, or tech background to dive in alone.
We also need to challenge the perfectionism that holds so many of us back. You don’t have to be an expert in AI to benefit from it. You don’t have to be a coder to set up an email list. You just have to be willing to learn—and to forgive yourself when you get it wrong the first time. Or the second. Or the eighth.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you cannot separate voice from technology. In today’s publishing world, the two are intertwined. The tools you use shape how—and whether—your voice is heard.
So my message to women in academic publishing, and to storytellers everywhere, is this:
Use the tools. Even when they scare you.
Ask the “silly” questions. Even when you feel behind.
And most of all, keep telling your stories.
Because in the end, it’s not about the tech.
It’s about the story.
And about making sure that your story doesn’t stay silent.
Thank you.