People & Principles

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 10 years and 57 issues and 300,000+ words will prove, 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, of course. Unpacking this “of course” is of great interest to us.

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. Makes no sense? Good. We have something in common then.

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.

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Masthead

Benoit Mandelbrot, who gave us the theory of fractals, began his book with the remark: “Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles and… nor does lightning travel in a straight line.” Ditto for organisations. Organisations are not triangles and pyramids. The layout below is organised around various teams, and within each team, the order in which people joined The Bombay Literary Magazine.

Founder, Editor (Fiction & Translated
Fiction)

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.

Editor-in-Chief

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 speculative short fiction, The Inconceivable Idea Of The Sun (Hachette, 2022) and the novel The Coincidence Plot (Simon & Schuster, 2023).

POETRY TEAM
Poetry Editor

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 QuarterlySingapore UnboundParis Lit UpPortside ReviewBorderless JournalThe Madras Courier, and elsewhere. Pervin is the co-founder of the annual Kolam Writers’ Workshop, an intensive 2-week residency program for emerging writers.

Associate Poetry Editor

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.

Associate Poetry Editor

KUNJANA PARASHAR is a poet from Mumbai. Her poems have appeared in Poetry NorthwestThe Indian QuarterlyASAP artWhat Are Birds?SWWIM Every DayColumbaHeavy 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.

Associate Poetry Editor

ASWIN VIJAYAN is an Assistant Professor at the Zamorin’s Guruvayurappan College, Calicut and has an MA in Poetry from the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. His poems have been published in the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in EnglishWitness: The Red River Book of Poetry of DissentThe Bombay Literary Magazine, and The Tangerine among others. He was awarded the Toto Award for Creative Writing in 2022.

Associate Poetry Editor

SONI SOMARAJAN is a content consultant and copywriter by profession. His poetry has appeared in The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Four Quarters Magazine, The Bangalore Review, Madras Courier, and The Alipore Post, and has been anthologised in the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2020 & 2022; Open Your Eyes: A Climate Anthology (2022); and Scent of Rain: Remembering Jayanta Mahapatra (2024). An alumnus of the University of Iowa IWP Advanced Poetry Seminar 2013, he has read poetry at the Hay Festival Thiruvananthapuram (2010), Bengaluru Poetry Festival (2022), and Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters (2024). Previously the Creative Director at The Quarantine Train, Soni Somarajan was also the Associate Editor (Poetry) at Yavanika Press. First Contact (Red River, 2020) is his debut book of poetry.

READERS (POETRY TEAM)

ZAINAB UMMER FAROOK

lives in Kozhikode. Her work has been featured in The Bombay Literary MagazineMuse India, and nether Quarterly, among others. She was a 2023 South Asia Speaks Fellow, and won the 2024 Toto Funds the Arts Award for Creative Writing in English.

AMAL MATHEW

presently writes and reads from New Delhi where he studies Literary Arts and Creative Writing at Ambedkar University Delhi. His creative works have appeared in the nether Quarterly, VAYAVYA, Muse India and The Tiger Moth Review among other places. He hails from Thrissur, Kerala.

AAKANKSHA AHUJA

(she/her) lives, loves, and lusts in Bangalore. Her work has appeared in HT’s Mint, Pena Lit Mag, Verse of Silence, Femme Fridays and elsewhere. She writes @theemdasher on Instagram.

ASHISH KUMAR SINGH

(he/him) is a queer Indian poet whose work has appeared in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Frontier Poetry, Grain Magazine, Chestnut Review, Fourteen Poems, Cutleaf Journal, Atlanta Review and elsewhere. Currently, he lives in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

FICTION TEAM
Associate Fiction Editor

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.

Associate Fiction Editor

JIGAR BRAHMBHATT

When not busy with his software development job, Jigar is found thinking about stories. Everything that happens to him is fodder. So nothing in life is good or bad, but yet another opportunity for a workable story. He feels he has found his zen thus.

Associate Fiction Editor

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.

Associate Fiction Editor

VENKATARAGHAVAN S.

is a writer and actor. His non-fiction book The Origin Story of India’s States was published by Penguin in 2021. His short fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine and Pratham Books. He was awarded the 2023 Neev Fellowship for Children’s Book Creators; his middle grade novel-in-progress is set in the Madras Zoo during World War II. He wrote, directed, produced and performed in Brachio: The Story of a Lighthouse, a play for children based on principles of social justice and equity, which premiered in 2023 in Bengaluru. Brachio is also forthcoming from HarperCollins as a chapter book for children.

Associate Fiction Editor

UDAY KANUNGO

(He/Him) is a short-story writer and a PhD Student at the English Department of Arizona State University. He hopes to remain in the first role forever, and that the second concludes in time. His research interests involve philosophy of aesthetics and sense-perception in literary works. He is also a translator from Hindi and Odia to English, and his non-fiction has appeared in various Indian publications such as The Hindu and Newslaundry. In 2022, he won the Toto Award for Creative Writing in English, and his fiction has been published in The Bombay Review and The Indian Quarterly.

TRANSLATIONS TEAM
Translations (Poetry) Editor

MANI RAO is the author of twelve collections of poetry, including Love Me In A Hurry (Atta Galatta 2022), Sing to Me (Recent Work, 2019) and Echolocation (Math Paper Press, 2014). Her books in translation from Sanskrit mediate between ancient India and today—the canonical Bhagavad Gita, the poetry and plays of Kalidasa, and Saundarya Lahari, the esoteric hymn to Shakti.

After studying literature in the early 80’s Madras, she earned her bread and preserve as an advertising and television professional for two decades in Mumbai, New Zealand and Hong Kong. A resetting of life-goals led her back to the world of learning– she then did an MFA from UNLV and a PhD in Religious Studies from Duke University. Researching mantra experience in tantric communities, she discovered new mantras and continuing revelations for Living Mantra: Mantra, Deities and Visionary Experience (Cham Springer, 2019). She lives in Bangalore with her parents and partner with whom she enjoys traveling off the beaten track.

Translations (Fiction) Editor

PRIYANKA SARKAR is the translator of three novels and a few short stories from Hindi to English. She has also done some translation work from English to Hindi and Bangla to English. Her focus has been on translating women writers in Hindi into English. She has also written some short fiction and non-fiction.

She considers her life a series of happy coincidences, especially her entry into publishing in 2007 right after a Masters in Literature from DU and the beginnings of her life as a translator. She takes special delight in the irreverent and humorous and is always looking to read something that will blow her mind.

STATUS: Currently on sabbatical from TBLM.

Translations (Poetry) Associate Editor

AmulyaAMULYA B is a Bengaluru-based multimedia journalist, writer and translator who – when not doomscrolling – works in both Kannada and English languages. She is the only person to have won both Kannada and English Toto Funds the Arts (TFA) for Creative Writing in the same year (2021). Despite the craving for stability, she thrives best in between spaces (Kannada-English, Creative Writing-Journalism, Rural-Urban).

Translations (Fiction) Editor

JAYASREE KALATHIL:

After spending decades as a researcher and activist in mental health and antiracism, Jayasree currently strives to live a writerly life in a village in an English forest, easily distracted by heather, birds, and fungi. She is the author of a children’s book, The Sackclothman. Her translations from Malayalam have won the JCB Prize for Literature (S. Hareesh’s Moustache), the Crossword Book Award for Translation (N. Prabhakaran’s Diary of a Malayali Madman), and the V. Abdulla Memorial Translation Award (Sheela Tomy’s Valli). Valli was also shortlisted for the American Literary Translators Association National Translation Award and received a jury commendation from Muse India-GSP Rao Translation Award. She is a board member of the South Asian Literature in Translation (SALT) project and a mentor on the ALTA mentorship programme.

Translations (Fiction) Associate Editor

UMA SHIRODKAR

lives in Mumbai and translates primarily from Marathi into English. She was a 2022 South Asia Speaks Fellow and her translations have appeared in Guernica Magazine and Hakara Journal. When she’s not inhabiting multilingual worlds, she loves reading unhealthy amounts of horror and macabre fiction in English and Marathi, learning new languages, and listening to the same 1760 songs on loop (though not necessarily in that order). She writes and translates @lyrically_obscure on Instagram.

VISUAL NARRATIVES TEAM
Visual Narratives Editor

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.

In the following months, Siddharth will reshape the visual language of The Bombay Literary Magazine, while curating and cultivating arts-based literature and narratives for the journal. You’ll find the author on Instagram @citizen.bliss and https://citizenbliss.squarespace.com

SYSTEMS TEAM
Code God (retd.)

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.

Sysadmin Deva

SUMIT SHETTY, when he is not cooking, eating or thinking about either, can be found in his usual habitat of his over-tinkered work desk where he haunts spaces between design and code. He claims he likes to make stuff but mostly dabbles in them until someone says he’s good at it and gets his ass in line. From such experiments have emerged projects like Aetherwise (a web-dev agency) and Webisoda (a platform for Indian OTT content).

He also manages to write (poetry & fiction) whenever he’s trying hard to ignore pressing business matters and has pieces published in The Yearbook of Indian Poetry 2020-21, The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Alipore Post, Unlost Journal, Gulmohur Quarterly. He is an organiser with the Pune Writers’ Group, is working on a science-fiction novel, and also likes to play fast and loose with the term “working”

FORMER TEAM MEMBERS
Poetry Editor

ARJUN RAJENDRAN’s most recent work is the much-praised poetry collection One Man, Two Executions (Westland, 2022). He’s also the author of  three other poetry books: The Cosmonaut in Hergé’s Rocket (Paperwall, 2017), Your Baby Is Starving (Aainanagar/VAYAVYA 2017), and  Snake Wine (Zaporogue, 2014). He was the Charles Wallace Fellow in Writing at The University of Stirling, Scotland (2018). His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, magazines and journals like SOFTBLOW, Eclectica, Poetry at Sangam, The Missing Slate, Asian Cha, and Berfrois.  In his tenure as poetry editor of TBLM (2017-2020),  he shepherded some seventy poets through the publication process.

Social Media Editor

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.Ishani was Social Media editor at TBLM from August 2022 through May 2023.

Social Media Editor

SHYAM MADHAVAN SARADA (“Greystroke”) Greystroke (aka Shyam Madhavan Sarada) is a writer, illustrator, art director, photographer and filmmaker.
Shyam began his professional illustrator’s career as the cartoonist for the erstwhile literary review magazine “Indian Review of Books” in 1995. Apart from the above, he is a founder-partner at Funky Rainbow, a leading independent retailer of Indian children’s books. Shyam was graphics designer at TBLM from April 2022 through August 2022. 

Poetry Editor

SAMPURNA CHATTARJI has published twenty books. These include the short story collection about 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”. Sampurna was TBLM’s poetry editor from September 2022 through March 2023.

Social Media Editor

UTKARSH MANI TRIPATHI writes essays on popular culture. He is deeply concerned with the state of children’s television. He also draws and cartoons on occasion.

Social Media Editor

NikitaNIKITA RAKHRA reports she is starting work on her law degree. And that in her spare time, she “fangirls over tennis and F1 while also writing when I can”.

Associate Poetry Editor

Aditi RaoADITI RAO is a writer, teacher, and potter. She is the author of two full length books of poetry, The Fingers Remember (Yoda Press, 2014) and A Kind of Freedom Song (Yoda Press, 2019). Her work has received national and international recognition through several awards and fellowships, including the Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship, the Hedgebrook Residency, the Sangam House Writers’ Residency, the Srinivas Rayaprol Prize for Poetry, the TFA Creative Writing in English award, and the Muse India – Satish Verma Young Writer Award. Aditi has a Masters’ of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Sarah Lawrence College. She also makes functional and whimsical pots under the banner of “HappyMess Ceramics”.

Social Media (Content) Editor

VASVI KEJRIWAL received her LLB from Queen Mary University London in 2019. Her work has been commended in the Troubadour International Poetry Prize. Vasvi’s works have appeared / forthcoming in Rattle, SWWIM Everyday, Nimrod and elsewhere.

Social Media (Design) Editor

ANANYA MEHTA is a student of English and Political Science at St. Joseph’s University in Bangalore, India. Her writing is inspired by city life, orange cats, flower markets, seasonal fruits and the women around her. She has been published on platforms such as Youth Ki Awaaz and The Blahcksheep. Her personal essay won the Mother Tongue Essay Contest conducted by the Department of English at St. Joseph’s University in April 2022. It has been published in the department’s online magazine, The Open Dosa.

Translations (Poetry) Editor

MANDAKINI PACHAURI: I have always unconsciously read and written snippets and reveries in several languages, walking around or on public transport. Some of these I bring to digital record and paper. It’s surprising to see my words on mothers or the woods make sense to others and my name at the end.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Friends of TBLM

KALYAN KANKANALA:  Kalyan’s competent team of lawyers at BananaIP Counsels, India’s leading intellectual property legal consultants, crafted a significant part of the contract we ask our authors to sign.

GEORGE “APPUPEN” MATHEN: We are indebted George for three things: (1) the gift of a graphic fiction piece (Issue 52), (2) sage advice on building a graphic fiction vertical, and (3) for spreading the word about TBLM within the graphic fiction community.

The Kolam Collective

The Bombay Literary Magazine is supported by a grant from Kolam EdTech, LLP. This allows us to offer our writers an honorarium.

Subscribe to TBLM’s substack Crow & Colophon
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