Meena Kandasamy (1984) would like to describe herself as a woman writer who is obsessed with revolutionary Dr.Ambedkar’s message of caste annihilation.

(But since people aren’t judged by what they say are, and instead by what they have done, here’s her brief profile.)

Two of her poems Mascara and My Lover Speaks of Rape have won first prizes in pan-Indian poetry contests. Her poems have been published widely in India and abroad through journals like The Little Magazine, Indian Literature, Kavya Bharati, Cerebration, Kritya, Indian Horizons, Sweet Magazine, Muse India, Great Works, Slow Trains and the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore.

Her first collection of poems, Touch, with a foreword by Kamala Das, has been published by Peacock Books (Frog Books, Mumbai) in August 2006.

She was the Editor of The Dalit, a bimonthly alternative English magazine of the Dalit Media Network in its first year of publication from 2001-2002. Her essays have been published in Tehelka, The Hindu Literary Review, Communalism Combat and Biblio.

She has translated about a dozen books. Significant among her translations are the writings and speeches of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Liberation Panthers Party) leader Thol. Thirumavalavan (Talisman: Extreme Emotions of Dalit Liberation (2003) and Uproot Hindutva: The Fiery Voice of the Liberation Panthers (2004), Samya, Kolkota). Besides translating a lot of Tamil Dalit poems into English, she has also translated the poetry and fables of Tamil Eelam poet Kasi Anandan.

She is a contributing editor to the literary e-zine www.museindia.com and considers herself lucky to be one of twenty-one woman writers from South Asia selected for 21 under 40: New Fiction for a New Generation, the Zubaan Anthology of Young Women Writing published in February 2007. She served on the three-member jury of the Prakriti Foundation’s One Billion Eyes Documentary Film Festival held in August 2007. She is also one of the 25 participating poets in Poetry with Prakriti, a poetry festival organized by the Prakriti Foundation and Landmark bookstore-chain.

Having majored in Linguistics and English Literature, she is presently pursuing her Ph.D. specializing in language teaching, technical translation and other deeply boring, easily forgotten topics. But she’s not really writing her thesis, she’s instead working on her novel!

She can be reached at meena84@gmail.com.

For a more professionally written profile, head to my redroom author page.