Anu Sahoo

I am a work-in-progress poet, performer and undergraduate student, hailing from a cosy corner in West India. I study English, Creative Writing as well as Psychology at Ashoka University, with a keen interest in Humanities and Social Sciences interdisciplinary research. Sometime during my travels between Europe and India, between Victorian and Contemporary poetry, between Hinduism and Sufism-- I realized the limitlessness of artistic experience. Therein grew my appetite for it.

My experiences as a writer and editor for several magazines/publications have taught me the many forms beauty can take. All my life, I've been writing what I wanted to read, an attempt to feel empathized with. Diasporic perspectives as well as themes of gender, sexuality, morality and relationship with the divine fascinate me. My first publication (2020) was eye-opening, an indicator to how far I had yet to grow. Since then I've indulged in various lectures, courses and workshops trying to learn the vast variety of ways I can experience as well as create literature.

I consume primarily poetry but also stream of consciousness literary fiction occasionally. Among my favourites are works written by Rumi, Emily Dickinson, Lord Alfred Tennyson, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, and more recent voices, namely; Imtiaz Dharker, Richard Siken and Ocean Vuong. I use my love of languages (Hindi, Bengali, Persian) to enrich my reading.

I aspire to follow in the footsteps of postmodernist and contemporary confessional poets I adore, preserving experiences that have built me as well as the world. When I'm not writing or editing social advocacy articles, you'll find me wrist deep in packets of gelatin-candy.

Recent Publications- The Moments Before I Was Interrupted, "If Cinderella Was A Boy" in Serendipity (Anthology), The Fiction Collective (Anthology)