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Staff Bios

Based out of Southern California, blogger Kunj Bhatt has a Bachelors degree in Sociology with an emphasis in Asian American studies. Interests include: Monsoon season, Chai and Peppermint Hot Chocolate, meme and parody Instagram accounts, anything out-of-the-ordinary or magical, and of course, all forms of Art.IG: @monsoonschai Twitter: monsoonschai Blog: www.monsoonschai.wordpress.com

 

Amrita

Designer Amrita Chanda does graphic design and writes code to make pretty pictures, occasionally dabbles in film-making, and is obsessed with the classical dance form of Odissi. To contact her, send her email at amrita.chanda@gmail.com.

 

Eli Heina Dadabhoy

Webmaster Eli Heina Dadabhoy is an occasional writer of non-fiction on The Orbit and a frequent, avid consumer of fiction. Their originally Gujarati family has branches in Mauritius, Burma, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Canada, and the UK. They hold a degree in English and Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine and have engaged in secular and social justice activism since 2010. Southern California born and raised, they live not far from Little India with their rotating menagerie of foster cats.

Maya

Senior Poetry Editor Prathim-Maya Dora-Laskey teaches English and Women’s Studies at Alma College (MI) after graduate school on three continents. An alumna of Stella Maris College in Chennai (India), her awards include scholarships from the Pennathur foundation, the FSA board at the University of South Carolina, and a Violet Morgan Vaughan award at the University of Oxford (UK). Previously a poetry editor at DesiLit Magazine and a current moderator at SAWNET (sawnet.org), she has published work in Contemporary South Asia, Interventions: A Journal of Postcolonial StudiesSouth Asian Review, and Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy . She lives with her partner and their four kids (two human, two canine). http://www.pocobrat.net

V.V.

Contributing Editor V.V. Ganeshananthan is a fiction writer and journalist whose debut novel, Love Marriage (Random House), was named one of Washington Post Book World’s Best of 2008 and long-listed for the Orange Prize, and chosen a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. The book, set in Sri Lanka and some of its diaspora communities, was widely translated. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, among others. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota. She has also taught at the University of Michigan and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is at work on a second novel, portions of which have appeared in Granta, Ploughshares, and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014. www.vasugi.com

Domestic violence and abuse volunteer, Poetry Editor Pooja Garg is currently working on a project chronicling survivor stories. Founder, Managing Editor for The Woman Inc. which aims at providing a platform and resources for abuse victims and survivors, Pooja combines writing with grassroots activities including poetry as therapy workshops. Chosen by Eclectica as Best of Poetry in the last 20 years, Shabana Azmi called her debut collection of poems ‘very moving and a must read’. Invited by Indian High Commission in New York and other platforms for poetry reading, her poems, essays and articles have found place in The Feminist Wire, The Aerogram, Boston Coffee House, The Missing Slate, The North East Review, The Brown Critique, Jaggery, India Resists, The Bangalore Review, Muse India, Open Road Review, Cafe Dissensus and various poetry anthologies. With extensive experience in journalism and publishing, Pooja has been Principal Correspondent for India Today and Bureau Chief, New Delhi for CIO. Stepping down as Poetry Editor for Open Road Review, Pooja joins Columbia Business School in her endeavor to learn and optimize on-ground and outreach efforts at her non-profit. After her earlier stint as Book Review Editor, Pooja is happy to be back with Jaggery as Poetry Editor. Always looking for quietude, Pooja believes her words are incidental.

Atreyee

Senior Fiction Editor Atreyee Gohain teaches English at Bethune-Cookman University, Florida. A fiction editor with Rupa Publications in another life, she is also an avid translator and translates from Assamese to English. Her translations have been published individually in Indian Literature, Sahitya Akademi’s bi-monthly journal, and Muse India, and in anthologies brought out by Penguin (Her Story) and Oxford University Press (The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North East India). At Rupa, she helmed the series Rupa Kahani and Rupa Ekanki, translations of short stories and one-act plays from various Indian languages into English. She holds a PhD from Ohio University, where she wrote her dissertation on the topic of women and mobility in the fiction of Indian women writers. She currently lives in Florida with her husband, daughter, and fur-daughter.

Contributing Editor Anjali Goyal is a development associate at the Asian American Arts Alliance and serves on the board of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC). Anjali has freelanced as a research assistant and copy editor for many publications, and from 2003–08, she was the programs director at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in NYC. She received a BA in English from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

Kinshuk Gupta, a medical student, uses the scalpel of his pen to write about his experiences as an undergraduate medical student. His work can be read or forthcoming in Joao Roque Literary Journal, American Writer’s Review, The Bengaluru Review, Mad in Asia Pacific, Human/Kind Journal, Failed Haiku, Cattails, Eunoia Review among others.

Minal

Columnist Minal Hajratwala is the author of Leaving India: My Family’s Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents (2009), which has been called “incomparable” by Alice Walker and “searingly honest” by The Washington Post. The book won a Pen USA Award, an Asian American Writers Workshop Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and a California Book Award. She is editor of Out! Stories From the New Queer India (2012), the first anthology of LGBT literature published since the decriminalization of homosexuality in India. As a writing coach, she has taught workshops nationally and internationally at universities, online, and via community organizations including the Voices of New America summer program on the University of California-Berkeley campus. She is a graduate of Stanford University and a former National Arts Journalism Program fellow at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She spent 2010–11 as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in India researching a novel, while also writing poems about the unicorns of the ancient Indus Valley. www.minalhajratwala.com

WafaEssays Editor Wafa Hamid is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Lady Shri Ram College for Women (LSR), New Delhi. She is pursuing her doctoral research at the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi where she also obtained her M.Phil in 2011. Her research explores the relationship between aesthetics and politics and focuses on the representation of marginalized subjectivities thereby leading to a negotiation of boundaries between public/private, past/present, centre/periphery, and self/other. Her areas of interest include: Gender Studies, Literary Theory, Popular Culture, Women’s Writing, Culture Studies, and Translation Studies among others.

Webmaster Jed Hartman is a technical writer and former fiction editor whose extracurricular interests include logodaedaly, interdigitation, sesquipedalia, and lapsus linguae. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, Clean Sheets, Fishnet, Flytrap, Strange Horizons, and Wet.  For more about him (or to read his blog), see his website.

Reviews Editor Ghada Ibrahim is a 21-year old student, blogger and graphic designer. A workaholic with a craze to devour all that the world has to offer, she currently writes for horror blog Freaked.com and freelances on the side. Expression in the form of writing comes easier to her than speaking. A bookworm, she is an avid reader of all genres focusing mainly on mystery, crime and thriller novels.Soniah

Blog Editor Soniah Kamal is a Pushcart Prize nominated essayist and fiction writer. Her novel ‘UnMarriageable: Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice in Pakistan is forthcoming from Random House USA (2018). Her debut novel An Isolated Incident was a finalist for the Townsend Award for Fiction, the KLF French Fiction Prize, and is an Amazon Rising Star pick. Soniah‘s TEDx talk, Redreaming Your Dream, is about regrets, second chances and redemption. Soniah’s short story ‘Fossils’, judged by Claudia Rankine, won the Agnes Scott 2017 Festival Award for Fiction. Her short story ‘Jelly Beans’ is selected for the 2017 Best of Asian Fiction Anthology. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Catapult, The Normal School, The Chicago Quarterly Review, The Missing Slate, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, The James Dickey Review, Scroll.in, Literary Hub, and has been widely anthologized. Soniah was born in Pakistan, grew up in England and Saudi Arabia and currently resides in the U.S.

Senior Reviews Editor Sushumna Kannan has a PhD in Cultural Studies from Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, India. Her research on the South Asian devotional traditions and feminist epistemology focused on the medieval saint, Akka Mahadevi and her vachanas. She received the BOURSE MIRA, French research fellowship in 2006 and 2007 and the Sir Ratan Tata fellowship for PhD Coursework and Writing in 2003 and 2007. She has published her research on Bhakti, dharmashastras, ethics, women’s writing in Kannada and English as well as on translation theory in peer-reviewed journals and as book chapters. She is currently working on a couple of book projects and the translation of Kannada fiction into English. She also writes poems. One of her articles was nominated for the Laadli media awards 2017. She is currently Adjunct Faculty at the San Diego State University, San Diego, USA. For more of her writings,
visit: www.sushumnakannan.weebly.com

Ellen

Contributing Editor Ellen Kombiyil is a poet, writer, and writing teacher. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barely South Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cider Press Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Poemeleon, Redactions, Spillway and Spry, among others. Honors include a 2013 nomination the Pushcart Prize, and a 2012 nomination for Best of the Net. She is a Founding Poet of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective www.greatindianpoetrycollective.org which publishes first and second books, showcasing new poetic voices from India.

AnuEditor-in-Chief Anu Mahadev is a left brained software engineer- turned right brained creative poet! Originally from India, she is now based out of New Jersey, with her husband and son. She is a recent MFA graduate of Drew University and a prolific writer. Other words to describe her are dreamer, choir singer, social bee, book and movie addict, avid hiker, lifelong learner and traveler. She writes mostly about love, life and the ties that bind us.

 

Sandhya

Essays Editor Sandhya Rao Mehta graduated from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi a millennium ago and got a PhD in expatriate literature as the diaspora was not a very fashionable term just then. She is presently working at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. Diaspora in all shapes and sizes interests her, even more so if its framed in the context of everyday life. Her most recent publications include an anthology on language studies, focusing particularly on the way English is evolving among those who have adopted it as their own.

Mary Anne

Consulting Editor Mary Anne Mohanraj was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and is author of Bodies in Motion (HarperCollins) and nine other titles. Bodies in Motion was a finalist for the Asian American Book Awards, a USA Today Notable Book, and has been translated into six languages. Previous titles include Aqua Erotica and Wet (two erotica anthologies edited for Random House), Kathryn in the City and The Classics Professor (two erotic choose-your-own-adventure novels, Penguin), and The Best of Strange Horizons. Mohanraj founded the World Fantasy Award-winning and Hugo-nominated magazine, Strange Horizons. She was Guest of Honor at WisCon 2010, received a Breaking Barriers Award from the Chicago Foundation for Women for her work in Asian American arts organizing, and won an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Prose. Mohanraj has taught at the Clarion SF/F workshop, and is now Clinical Assistant Professor of fiction and literature and Associate Director of Asian and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She serves as Executive Director of both DesiLit (www.desilit.org) and the Speculative Literature Foundation (www.speclit.org). Recent publications include The Stars Change, a Lambda-finalist science fiction novella featuring South Asians who have settled a university planet. She lives in a creaky old Victorian in Oak Park, just outside Chicago, with her partner, Kevin, two small children, and a sweet dog. www.mamohanraj.com

Dipika

Contributing Editor Dipika Mukherjee’s second novel, Shambala Junction, won the UK Virginia Prize for Fiction (Aurora Metro, 2016). Her debut novel, Thunder Demons (Gyaana, 2011), was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and republished as Ode to Broken Things (Repeater, 2016). She won the Liakoura Prize for Poetry (USA, 2016) and the Gayatri GaMarsh Award for Literary Excellence (USA, 2015) as well as the Platform Flash Fiction Prize (India, 2009). Her short story collections include Rules of Desire (Fixi, 2015) and edited collections include Champion Fellas (Word Works, 2016), Silverfish New Writing 6 (Silverfish, 2006) and The Merlion and Hibiscus (Penguin, 2002). She has two poetry collections: “The Third Glass of Wine” (Writer’s Workshop, 2015), and The Palimpsest of Exile, (Rubicon Press, 2009). She lives in Chicago, dipikamukherjee.com

Swapna Narayanan is a Bangalore based author who writes on women empowerment, parenting, corporate life etc. Her work has been published in Scroll.in, TheNewsMinute, TheWomanInc, The Centurion, YourStory etc. An efficient communicator, she lectures in various forums and participates in panel discussions, talk shows about Women in Corporate Life as well Technical & Business Communication.

Arts Editor Srividya Ramamurthy is a founder and CEO of Dynamic Instance, a company which provides leadership coaching as well as coaching to produce high performing team while enabling women in leadership roles. Based out of New Jersey, in her life before being an entrepreneur, she was a Senior Vice President at Bank of America, being recognized as an “Emerging Leader” across the globe.  She initiated and chaired coaching programs for women and was an actively involved in providing career path and growth path for her global team. While donning various hats she has kept her passion to performing arts,  Bharatanatyam dance form alive and intact. She has performed in various venues and continues to learn being a life-long student of arts. She has tremendous interest in music and can play the violin. She  hails from a family of musicians and credits them for making her try and pursue fine arts .

Chinmay Rastogi is a writer of stories that make people smile, sometimes nervously. His work has appeared in Every Day Fiction. In addition to learning new languages, he likes to add color to the lives of those around him. When not writing, he is often found smiling, or mumbling, under a motorcycle helmet or behind a harmonica.

 

 

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Just me\Samreen Sajeda.JPGSamreen Sajeda has graduated in English Literature from Sophia College, Mumbai. She has also completed an MA in English Literature from the University of Mumbai. She is currently reading up for her PhD in Palestinian Poetry in Translation. She writes poems and occasionally also indulges in writing short stories. Her work has been published on the Indian Cultural Forum, in Muse India, Spark, Hakara and in the anthology of Poetry India (2017).

 

Zohra Shaik is a software engineer who lives in Chicago,IL and hails from Hyderabad, India. She is an enthusiastic writer and an avid reader. She is a self-help specialist and runs Ayesha, a movement to empower teenage girls. She is heavily involved with volunteer work for the elderly and the disadvantaged. She reviews written works on her blogging site   http://www.mereairthesewords.com. She is a contributor on Women’s web and writes passionately about women’s issues. She brings with her a diverse unique perspective that comes from years of reading, writing and simply being human.

 

2 Comments
  1. jayati roy #

    Wow! Simply impressive group of people!

    October 2, 2012
  2. It appears to be an excellent team of individuals getting together and come to the fore.
    Congratulations and wishing you good innings in your combine efforts.

    July 15, 2013