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, Almost Island, Extra Teeth, The London Magazine, and Ambit. Her essays have been published in anthologies from Guillemot Press (UK) and Humans and Nature Press (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. Some other writing honours include: a Desperate Literature Short Story Prize shortlist with a special mention from judge Mariana Enríquez (2025), a Gulliver Travel Grant by the Speculative Literature Foundation (2023), a Vijay Nambisan Sangam House fellowship (2022), a Toto Funds the Arts writing award (2017), a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds-Young Poets Network Prize (2015), a Jane Martin Poetry Prize shortlist (2014). She is working on her first novel.
In addition to writing, Sohini is a literary editor with over a decade of experience, now working independently. She is also the first poetry editor at Words Without Borders (interviewed here), where she works with translators and poets from various corners of the world such as Cristina Rivera Garza, Jason Allen-Paisant, Jen Calleja, Michele Hutchison, Maniniwei, Yoshimasu Gozo, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Dan Ying, and more. 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.
As a freelance editor, Sohini is especially keen to work with literary translators, poets, and cross-genre writers. Contact: sohini.basak.editor@gmail.com
She is happy to share jade cuttings in glass bottles with fellow daydreamers in the neighbourhood. To those far away, she offers instead her Treeptych.
Sohini Basak 