~28,000 WORDS
©2014
Outpost19

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A high school teacher begins to question the course of his life after a famous young actress moves into town. In the starlet's shadow, his girlfriend, his mother, his neighbor, and his students take on strange new dimensions. Told in a series of snapshots, UNDERSTUDIES presents a sharp, funny, and heartbreaking study of beauty, celebrity, and everyday needs.

"Ravi Mangla's delightingly tight, micro-chaptered UNDERSTUDIES is an unassumingly beautiful and moving debut. It's elegantly and hilariously precise about everything it touches, and it touches almost everything human." — Gary Lutz

"Ravi Mangla's UNDERSTUDIES is a brilliant meditation on the private cost of celebrity, the longing to transcend the ordinary, and the seductive nature of performance. Darkly funny, sharply-observed, and terrifically moving, UNDERSTUDIES is an essential debut." — Laura van den Berg, THE ISLE OF YOUTH