A story of first love across cities spanning the decade that transformed the internet

Tombolo Books is thrilled to welcome debut author Ankur Thakkar to celebrate his book Blow Yourself Up which has recently been longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2026 First Novel Prize!

Thakkar will be in conversation with Florida author Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya!

More about Blow Yourself Up

In the halls of an elite East Coast high school, Arjun and Payal fall in love as the world begins to tilt toward the digital. Over the next eight years, their trajectories diverge as sharply as the fractured internet itself. Payal ascends to the dizzying, dopamine-fueled heights of New York’s influencer economy, finding fame on Boost, a looping video app that is as rewarding as it is demanding. Meanwhile, in a cavernous office in Chicago, Arjun, a musician whose dreams have quieted, now cleans up the same platform’s debris, moderating the internet’s darkest videos. When a brutal act of political violence against a beloved musician goes viral, this rip in reality forces the pair to confront the motivations of the platforms they inhabit. A sharp exploration of creative ambition and the multifarious nature of identity, this is a story of love in the time of infinite scroll and a look at what we sacrifice to be seen.

ANKUR THAKKAR is a writer and multimedia artist whose stories have appeared in Guernica, [PANK], and TriQuarterly. He was a 2025 Sewanee Writers’ Conference Scholar and his artwork has been exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo and La Friche la Belle de Mai. He lives and works in Brooklyn.

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is a lesbian magazine editor and writer of essays, fiction, and criticism living in Orlando. Her queer horror novelette Helen House was named one of the Best LGBTQ Books of 2022 by NBC News. She has been the managing editor of Autostraddle for five years and a writer for Autostraddle for 11 years. She also oversees the newly launched Autostraddle print magazine and is an assistant fiction editor for Foglifter. Her fiction appears in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Catapult, The Offing, Joyland, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and others, and she has held fellowships with the McCormack Writing Center and Lambda Literary.