The Bombay Literary Magazine‘s mission is to promote writers through their fine work. We are also interested in nonfiction that looks at literature from a “writerly” perspective. We publish stories, poems, essays, reviews, visual narratives and graphic fiction.
Our people are mostly located in India, and hence our content has a certain South-Asian orientation. However, this is only an accident of geography. As our archives spanning 8 years and 50 issues and 263,000+ words will illustrate, we welcome writers from all over the world.
We love literature, but this love is not— at least we try to ensure it is not— a blind love. We like to mull over how something is written, and not get unbuttoned simply by what it is about, or why it was written, or who wrote it, or to which genre it belongs. Of course, we all know that style cannot be so neatly unzipped from content, yes, this we all know, of course. Unpacking this “of course” is of great interest to us.
This is why we aim to publish writing that affect us as readers and writers. Similarly, in forthcoming issues, our essays will focus on the literary, rather than the political or cultural or topical. Our reviews, unavoidably lengthy, will consider the work at hand from a writerly perspective.
But what does “Bombay” have to do with literature? Glad you asked this question. We could yammer endlessly about the spirit of Bombay, its Gully Boy ambitions, colonial hangovers, and how in a country obsessed with origins, it welcomes all, regardless of origin, and how the city is sone chandi ki dagariya tu dekh babua et cetera, et cetera. But basically, like all great literature, any great city is both universal and particular at the same time. Hence the “Bombay” in our name. Hope that has been cleared up?
It is an old truism in writing that a sufficiently long ramble eventually contradicts itself. We will reserve that delightful mode of self-discovery for a later conversation. Welcome to The Bombay Literary Magazine.
TANUJ SOLANKI writes fiction when he’s not busy at his job in a life insurance company. In 2019, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for his short-story collection, Diwali in Muzaffarnagar. His latest novel, The Machine is Learning, was longlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature 2020. He lives in Gurugram and doesn’t mind it much.
KINJAL SETHIA is a freelance writer-editor based in Pune. Presently she is working as a content strategist for a fin-tech startup. Her work has appeared at nether Quarterly, Borderless, Samyukta Fiction. She is a part of the writing collectives The Quarantine Train and Pune Writers’Group.
SIDDHARTH DASGUPTA writes poetry and fiction from cities inflicted with an existential throb. His fourth book—A Moveable East (Red River)—arrived in 2021. Siddharth’s literature has appeared in journals around the world, while he has read in places like Lucknow, Galle, Istanbul, Mandalay, and Paris. The arts & culture being a constant part of his life, Siddharth also articulates stories for a smattering of publications. With a prior background in branding & advertising, his literature is often infused with visual conversations. He lives in the city of Poona.
YASHASVI VACHHANI is a writer, facilitator and curriculum developer of children’s creative writing and arts workshops. She has a keen interest in poetry and tea.
KUNJANA PARASHAR is a poet from Mumbai. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, The Indian Quarterly, ASAP|art, What Are Birds?, SWWIM Every Day, Columba, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2021 Toto Funds the Arts award for poetry and the 2021 Deepankar Khiwani Memorial Prize.
SHIVANI MUTNEJA found her way into print as a feisty feminist poet, but now she writes about ugly husbands, marital conundrums, and bizarre children. Her work has appeared in Nether Magazine, Jellyfish Review, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Two Serious Ladies and decomp journal among others. Her blog on medium which began as a curation of philosophical dilemmas in the kitchen is now steadily transforming into a meditation on Rene Magritte’s clouds.
ANIL MENON estimates he is about 50% of the way into his hero’s journey. He has the usual list of awards-almost-won, residencies lounged at, stories translated into Igbo, movies acted in, and other happy side-effects of the writing life. He is the author of Half Of What I Say (Bloomsbury, 2015). A collection of his speculative short fiction, The Inconceivable Idea Of The Sun (Hachette) and a novel The Coincidence Plot (Simon & Schuster) will be published this year.
PERVIN SAKET was awarded the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2021, and she was the inaugural Fellow for the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, 2021. She curated Literature at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2023, and is on the review committee of The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, 2023. Her poems, including the collection A Tinge of Turmeric have been widely anthologised. Her novel Urmila has been adapted for the stage, featuring classical Indian dance forms of Kathak, Bharatnatyam and Odissi. She has authored a series of eight landmark biographies for children, featuring Indian women in science and sports. Her work has been featured in The Indian Quarterly, Singapore Unbound, Paris Lit Up, Portside Review, Borderless Journal, The Madras Courier, and elsewhere. Pervin is the co-founder of the annual Kolam Writers’ Workshop, an intensive 2-week residency program for emerging writers.
ADITYA ATHALYE is here to tell you that this site works because of other peoples’ black magic. He’s pinched a book of spells and is trying to keep it up. He thinks the Internet is held together by duct tape and a hodgepodge of shell scripts. Sometimes he writes code that works sometimes. He lives in his head everywhere. But if you do catch him somewhere in meatspace, and it’s after 4PM, and he’s drinking any more filter coffee, please do everyone this favour. Gently pry the cup away from his hands. He can’t handle any more filter coffee after 4PM. His blog is just like this bio; took him forever to type out, and hasn’t really gone anywhere.
SAMPURNA CHATTARJI has published twenty books. These include the short story collection about Bombay/Mumbai, Dirty Love (Penguin, 2013); and ten poetry titles, the most recent being Elsewhere Where Else (Poetrywala, 2018) and Space Gulliver: Chronicles of an Alien (HarperCollins, 2020). Her translation of Joy Goswami’s prose poems After Death Comes Water (HarperCollins, 2021) has been described as “a living voice, inventive and vivid as the English of Joyce”.
ISHANI CHATTERJI is a content and social media consultant. She oscillates between copywriting for brands and writing for herself, the latter being the harder one. You can find her in the nooks and corners of bookstores and small cafes, usually curled up with a book about cities and people, and always with a steaming cup of black coffee. She watches theatre, loves essays and has a new found love for annotating everything she reads.
