Priya Sarukkai Chabria

Priya Sarukkai Chabria is an Indian poet, translator and novelist writing in English, and a curator.

She has written four poetry collections, two speculative fiction novels, translations from Classical Tamil, literary nonfiction, and a novel.

She has edited two poetry anthologies.

She is also founding editor of Poetry at Sangam, an Indian online literary journal of poetry.

She has also written a 're-visioning' of Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore.

This work, as per Sarukkai Chabria's interview in the Hindustan Times "retained the ideas and feelings of the original but pared and updated the language while arranging the words more freely on the page".

She was awarded for Outstanding Contribution to Literature by the Indian government.

She is a member of the Advisory Council of G100 and Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange, Australia.

Her poems have been translated into several languages, Indian and European.

Writing about Sarukkai Chabria's work, the eminent scholar of Indian poetry, Bruce King, said: "...she is a highly competent writer aware of form, of poetic conventions in many different language traditions, with a feeling for cadence, lineation, image, compression and sound. She ranges through an impressive variety of themes and manners". American poet Dennis Nurkse, a Literature Awardee from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Fellowship, said Sarukkai Chabria possesses an "ability to handle historical and mythic material in ways that make them completely new".

She was born in Chennai; her mother was Saroja Kamakshi and father, Vasu Gopalan Sarukkai.

Her sibling is Malavika Sarukkai, a Bharatnatyam dancer.

Priya Sarukkai Chabria studied at Cathedral and John Connon School, and went on to secure a degree in Arts at St. Xaviers College in Mumbai.

She has a post graduate diploma in Mass Communication from St Xaviers.

She is married to Prof. Suresh Chabria, who taught at Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and was also the Director of the National Film Archive, Pune.

Priya Sarukkai Chabria co-founded a film club, Friends of the Archive, which focussed on screening silent films.

She has worked in an assortment of fields from advertising to journalism.

She conducted research at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in subcontinental aesthetic traditions.

She lives in Pune with her husband.

Besides writing, Sarukkai Chabria has also presented her work and availed residencies at Writer’s Centre, Norwich, Sun Yat-sen International Writers Program, Guangzhou, Commonwealth Literature Conference, Innsbruck, Alphabet City, Canada, Frankfurt Book Fair, UCLA, Jaipur Literature Festival, and Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.

She has curated seminars for Sahitya Akademi, Raza Foundation- PIC, and a module of essays on Rasa theory for Sahapedia.

She has been cited for 'Outstanding Contribution to Literature' by the Government of India.

Anil Menon & Vandana Singh, Zubaan, New Delhi, 2012

I Had A Dream, Ecoceanic: Global South Science Fiction, Eds.

Tarun K Saint & Francesco Verso, Future Fiction, Roma, 2023

Kairos, No News 90 Poets Reflect on a Unique BBC Newscast, Ed.

Bombay/Mumbai :Immersions with photographer Christopher Taylor, Niyogi Books, New Delhi, 2013, ISBN 9789381523681

She also curated seminars for Sahitya Akademi, the Indian academy of letters.

A partial list:

Blanket, Relatively True: Stories of Truth, Deception, Post-Truth From the Indian Subcontinent and Australia, Eds.

Meenakshi Bharat & Sharon Rundle, Orient Black Swan, Hyderabad, 2022

Cockaigne A Reappraisal (Draft) by Dr. Indumati Jones, Kitaab Anthology, Singapore, 2023

Dreaming Of The Cool Green River, New Horizons: The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, Ed.

Chabria, with poet Ravi Shankar, translated the songs of 8th century Tamil poet Andal in her book Andal: The Autobiography of A Goddess. The book won the 2017 Muse India translation award at the Hyderabad Literary Festival.

The Experimental Fiction Award in The Best Asian Speculative Fiction 2018, an anthology published by Kitaab International.

Her speculative novel Clone was called 'one of the best reads of 2018, by The Feminist Press.

Tarun K Saint, Gollancz, London, 2019

Flyby, Solarpunk Creatures: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, World Weavers Press, New Mexico, 2023

Fragments from the Book of Beauty, Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by The Ramayan, Ed.