Poet, writer, and dancer Tishani Doshi was born in Madras, India, to Welsh and Gujarati parents. She earned a BA from Queens College in North Carolina and an MA from the Writing Seminars from the Johns Hopkins University. After working in the fashion magazine industry in London, Doshi returned to India. An unexpected meeting with one of Indian dance’s leading choreographers, Chandralekha, led Doshi to a career in dance. She currently performs internationally with the Chandralekha group. She is a freelance journalist, and her work has appeared in newspapers and journals such as the Guardian, the National, and the Hindu. She writes a regular column for New Indian Express and was a finalist in the Outlook/Picador India Non-Fiction Competition.

Doshi is widely acclaimed as a creative writer; her first book of poetry, Countries of the Body (2006), won a Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her other collections include Everything Begins Elsewhere (2013), Dolce Marcescenza (Sweet Decay) (2015), Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (2018), and A God at the Door (2021).

Doshi’s first novel, The Pleasure Seekers (2010), was shortlisted for the Hindu Best Fiction Award and has been translated into several languages. She is also the author of Fountainville: New Stories from the Mabinogion (2013), a retelling of the Mabinogion myth, as well as two books about place and home, Madras Then Chennai Now (2013) and The Adulterous Citizen (2015). Her latest novel is Small Days and Nights (W. W. Norton, 2020).

Her honors and awards include an Eric Gregory Award and an All-India Poetry Prize. She lives in Tamil Nadu, India.

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