The first play by multi-media artist Vivek Shraya, about fame and personal transformation.

Described as "cultural rocket fuel" by Vanity Fair, Vivek Shraya is a multi-media artist whose art, music, novels, and poetry and children's books explore the beauty and the power of personal and cultural transformation.

How to Fail as a Popstar is Vivek's debut theatrical work, a one-person show that chronicles her journey from singing in shopping malls to "not quite" pop music superstardom with beguiling humour and insight. A reflection on the power of pop culture, dreams, disappointments, and self-determination, this astonishing work is a raw, honest, and hopeful depiction of the search to find one's authentic voice.

The book includes colour photographs from the 2020 production in Toronto, and a foreword by its director Brendan Healy.

Vivek Shraya is a writer, artist and musician from Alberta. As a writer, Shraya examines questions of race in Canada. She has been nominated for the Lambda Literary Award four times and has received the 2015 Honour of Distinction from The Writers' Trust of Canada. Shraya manages the Arsenal Pulp Press imprint VS. Books, which offers a mentorship and publishing opportunity to a young Indigenous, Black writer or writer of colour. (From Arsenal Pulp Press)

Shraya's work includes the novel She of the Mountains and the poetry collection even this page is white. Her latest books are the essay I'm Afraid of Men and comic book Death Threat.