Anansya Latka

You grew up between India, Singapore, and Tokyo before studying and working in the United States. How has living across different cultures shaped the way you observe people and construct characters?

Growing up across different countries made me very aware of how much of communication happens beneath the surface. Every place has its own social rules, rhythms, and assumptions, and moving between them taught me to pay attention to what people mean rather than just what they say. As a writer, that has made me interested in contradictions. I’m drawn to characters who are navigating multiple identities at once, or who are trying to belong somewhere while carrying experiences from somewhere else. Even when my stories aren’t explicitly about cultural displacement, they’re often about people translating themselves to others and struggling with the gaps that remain.

Your stories often explore grief, transition, and the distance between what people feel and what they are able to express. Why are you drawn to these emotional spaces?

I’m interested in moments when people are forced to confront change, because those moments tend to reveal who they really are. Grief, transition, and uncertainty strip away a lot of the narratives we build about ourselves. At the same time, most people aren’t particularly good at articulating what they’re feeling in those moments. They deflect, avoid, joke, or focus on practical concerns instead. That tension between inner experience and outward behavior feels deeply human to me. As a writer, I’m less interested in what characters say they feel than in the ways those feelings leak into everything else they do.

Roommates is told largely through Steve’s perspective, while gradually revealing the limitations and contradictions of his version of events. What interested you about working with an unreliable protagonist?

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that most people see themselves as the protagonist of their own story. Steve isn’t trying to deceive the reader; he’s trying to convince himself. He interprets events in ways that protect his self-image, and because we’re so close to his perspective, we initially accept many of those interpretations. What interested me was allowing readers to slowly recognize the distance between Steve’s version of reality and what everyone around him is experiencing. That process felt more revealing than simply presenting a character who knows he’s in the wrong.

The repeated idea that Steve is “reasonable” becomes increasingly ironic as the story progresses. How did you develop the balance between humor, discomfort, and emotional complexity in his character?

I never wanted Steve to become a caricature. Most of the humor comes from the gap between how he sees himself and how his actions appear to others. At the same time, I wanted readers to understand why he behaves the way he does, even when they disagree with him. The discomfort comes from recognizing parts of ourselves in him—the tendency to rationalize, to avoid accountability, or to frame our own needs as objectively reasonable. I think comedy is often most effective when it’s rooted in something emotionally true, so I tried to let the humor emerge naturally from his blind spots rather than treating him as the punchline.

Although Roommates centers on a conflict within a group of friends, it also examines personal space, entitlement, miscommunication, and the stories people create to justify their actions. Which of these themes was the starting point for the project?

The project really began with the idea of self-justification. I was interested in how people construct narratives that allow them to see themselves as reasonable, generous, or fair, even when their actions suggest something more complicated. Once that idea was in place, themes like entitlement, personal space, and miscommunication emerged naturally because they’re situations where competing narratives often collide. Two people can experience the exact same event and come away with entirely different understandings of what happened. Roommates grew out of that tension.

The project contains highly specific details—radio shows, film sets, shared rooms, unanswered messages, and small domestic conflicts. How do these everyday details help you build a larger emotional narrative?

I’ve always believed that emotional truths are often revealed through ordinary moments rather than dramatic declarations. Everyday details create texture, but they also create pressure. An unanswered text message, a disagreement over a shared space, or a casual conversation can carry years of resentment, affection, insecurity, or disappointment beneath the surface. Those details make the world feel lived-in, but they also give characters opportunities to reveal themselves through behavior. For me, the emotional narrative emerges from the accumulation of those small moments.

Your work moves between comedy, grief, tension, and psychological observation. How do you determine the tone of a scene without simplifying the characters into heroes and villains?

I try to approach every character with curiosity rather than judgment. Most people aren’t purely right or wrong, and they’re rarely acting from a place of complete self-awareness. A scene’s tone usually emerges from the emotional truth of the situation rather than from a decision to make it funny or dramatic. Life is often contradictory—we can be grieving and amused, frustrated and affectionate, confident and insecure at the same time. Allowing those contradictions to coexist helps create characters who feel more human. I’m generally less interested in assigning blame than in understanding why people make the choices they do.