Nikesh Shukla

Nikesh Shukla (born 8 July 1980) is a British author and screenwriter.

His writing focuses on race, racism, identity, and immigration.

He attended Merchant Taylors' school in Northwood, leaving in 1996, then Dr. Challoner's Grammar School.

Shukla is the author of three novels: Coconut Unlimited (2010), Meatspace (2014) and The One Who Wrote Destiny (2018) and the council of good friends(2020)

He is the editor of the 2016 collection of essays The Good Immigrant, which features contributions from Riz Ahmed, Musa Okwonga, Bim Adewunmi, and Reni Eddo-Lodge, among others.

In 2017 he one of was one of the co-founders of the Jhalak Prize awarded annually to British or British resident writers of colour.

After Danny Boyle awarded the film Best Short at the 2017 Shuffle Festival, Boyle cast Patel in the title role of Jack in Yesterday (2019).

Shukla has been a columnist for The Observer's magazine supplement and The Pool.

He is also the author of two books for Young Adults: Run, Riot (2018) and The Boxer (2019).

With Chimène Suleyman, he co-edited the 2019 follow-up collection called The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect On America.

Shukla was born to Indian immigrants in the London suburb Harrow.

In 2019 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

He was a Rathbones Folio Prize Mentor in 2019–2020.

Brown Baby, a memoir addressed to his young daughter, was published in 2021.

He hosts a podcast of the same name.

Shukla co-wrote the short film Two Dosas with Sarmad Masud.

It starred Himesh Patel.

In January 2019, Shukla appeared in series 47 of the BBC Radio 4 show Great Lives, nominating Pakistani wrestler The Great Gama (1878–1960).

Shukla hosted a podcast called The Subaltern podcast, in which he has conversations with writers about writing.

He also co-hosted a podcast called Meat Up, Hulk Out with sci-fi writer James Smythe.