Sohini Basak is a writer of fiction, poetry, and the in-between. Her first poetry collection We Live in the Newness of Small Differences was awarded the inaugural International Beverly Manuscript Prize and published in 2018. Her poems have been anthologized widely, most recently by Penguin Press (India), Red Hen Press (USA), Emma Press (UK), and Math Paper Press (Singapore). Her fiction has been published in journals like 3 A.M. Magazine, Extra Teeth, The London Magazine, and Ambit. Her essays are forthcoming in nature writing anthologies from Guillemot Press (UK) and the Centre for Humans and Nature (USA). She studied literature and creative writing at the universities of Delhi, Warwick, and East Anglia, where she received the 2015 Malcolm Bradbury Grant for Poetry. Other honours include a Toto Funds the Arts writing award (2017), a Vijay Nambisan fellowship at Sangam House (2022), and most recently, the 2023 Gulliver Travel Grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation. She is working on her first novel.
In addition to writing, Sohini is an experienced editor, now working indepently. She has recently joined the literary translation organization Words Without Borders as the digital magazine’s first poetry editor (interview here). Previously, she was a commissioning editor at HarperCollins India, where she acquired, edited, and published a list of literary titles, notably The World that Belongs to Us: Queer Poetry from South Asia edited by Aditi Angiras and Akhil Katyal, A God at the Door by Tishani Doshi (shortlisted for the Forward Prize), No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories by Jayant Kaikini and Tejaswini Niranjana (winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the ALTA National Translation Award), The Queen of Jasmine Country by Sharanya Manivannan (longlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature), and Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir by Farah Bashir. She has also worked for the international translation journal Asymptote.
Currently, Sohini works independently with writers, social justice organizations, and publishing houses in the UK, the USA, and India. She is open for work queries and is especially keen to work with literary translators, poets, and cross-genre writers.
Contact: sohini.basak.editor@gmail.com
Sohini Basak 