Tishani Doshi is a poet, dancer, novelist, and journalist. She was born in Madras, India, now called Chennai, to a Welsh mother and a Gujarati father. She studied business administration and communications at Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina, and earned her MA in writing at Johns Hopkins University. In 1999, Doshi moved to London and worked for Harper’s and Queen magazine before returning to India in 2001. There, she became lead dancer for famed Indian choreographer Chandralekha's troupe, a role she held for 15 years.
Doshi’s first poetry collection, Countries of the Body (2006), won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. Since then, she has published four more poetry books, including Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (2018), which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and a Firecracker Award, and A God at the Door (2021), shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry. She is also the author of several novels, including The Pleasure Seekers, shortlisted for the Hindu Best Fiction Award and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and Small Days and Nights, shortlisted for the Tata Best Fiction Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. A winner of the Eric Gregory Award and the All-India Poetry Competition, Doshi works as a freelance journalist for newspapers such as The Guardian, The International Herald Tribune, The New Indian Express, and The National. She is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Practice, Literature, and Creative Writing at New York University, Abu Dhabi.
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Photo by Carlo Pizzati.