Meher Divya Manda

Meher Manda is a poet, short story writer, journalist, editor and educator originally from Mumbai, India, and currently based in New York City and Providence. After earning an undergraduate degree in advertising and journalism from the University of Mumbai, she earned her MFA in Fiction at the College of New Rochelle where she was the founding editor-in-chief of the literary journal The Canopy Review. As a journalist, she writes about the intersection of culture and politics, with a focus on South Asian works of art. Her work can be found at The Juggernaut, Bustle, Scroll, Firstpost and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook of poems Busted Models (No, Dear / Small Anchor Press, 2019) and her poetry, fiction and nonfiction have appeared and are forthcoming in Catapult, Epiphany, The Margins, Sportklet, Hobart Pulp, Cosmonauts Avenue, Los Angeles Review, Barren Magazine, Peach Magazine and elsewhere. She has been nominated for Best New Poets 2020 and Best of the Net Anthology 2020 and has received fellowships and grants from DreamYard, Teachers & Writers Collaborative and J.N. Tata Endowment for Higher Education. She has been featured and interviewed at Brooklyn Poets, Catharsis Magazine, Hyperallergic, Asia Art Tours, The Polis Project, Lumina Journal, The Hindu and elsewhere. 

As an educator, Manda has taught poetry and fiction workshops at the College of New Rochelle and has been a teaching artist with Community-Word Project, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, USDAN, the 92Y and The Cooper Union Saturday Program. She has also taught concentrated creative writing craft workshops at Manhattanville College, Queens Library and the Langston Hughes House. Her teaching philosophy is rooted in writing for justice, inclusion of diverse literary voices and the understanding that writing is an art form that continually informs and is informed by contemporary politics. 

She is the writer behind the political web-comic Jamun Ka Ped, which she co-creates with Mayukh Goswami and a collective member at the worker-owned, indie publisher Radix Media. She is currently at work on a political graphic novel about India and a short story collection. She is the co-parent of a tuxedo cat named Azad.