NANDINI BHATTACHARYA
ABOUT NANDINI
I was born and raised in India, but I’ve called the United States my second continent for the last thirty-five years. As you see, I do not call either place “home,” because it’s that question of where “home” is that my writing, dreaming, and searching are all about. Maybe it’s in books, art, and communities of the curious, compassionate, and creative, because wherever I’ve lived, I’ve generally turned to them for answers to life’s big questions. One of those big questions is how we lose our homes and lands—where our placentas are buried, making our connections to our mothers deathless— because of atrocities committed and institutionalized by scoundrels who find their last resort in politics, be it in the US, India, Russia, Israel, or elsewhere.
In other news, I’m a writer, Professor of English, public speaker, reviewer, and blogger. My first novel Love’s Garden (2020) garnered critical praise as “a fascinating and well-crafted journey into India's complex past” (Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni), and “a sprawling family saga set against a background of some of the most momentous events of twentieth-century Indian history” (Clifford Garstang). Shorter work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sequestrum, The Common, Cincinnati Review, Bellevue Literary Review, ROOM, Chicago Quarterly Review, Another Chicago Magazine, River Styx, Rumpus, Notre Dame Review, Oyster River Pages, Folio Literary Journal, Sky Island Journal, Bangalore Review, Bombay Review, PANK, the Saturday Evening Post Best Short Stories 2021, Raising Mothers Journal, Funny Pearls, and more.
Writing can be hard and solitary, but I’ve had the luck to enjoy literary community at the Bread Loaf Writers Workshop, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, the Vermont Studio Center, VONA, and the Centrum and Ragdale Artist Residencies, and most joyously at the Warren Wilson College Program for Writers, of which I am an alumna. I teach Literature and Creative Writing and enjoy another community of dedicated writers, readers, and students through that. We do our work best when we are supported, nurtured, and valued. I am lucky; I have been supported, nurtured, and valued. I want to pass it on. So, PLEASE REACH OUT TO ME if any of my work has interested or intrigued you; there is a contact form link on this site. I’d like to meet others who are also asking questions similar to mine about the responsibilities we have to stand by those who cannot speak or write, though we must never imagine we can, adequately or even close, tell their stories for them. I also want to learn from those who ask, "What price progress?" when societies must only be judged by how they treat their weakest and most vulnerable. Perhaps you’ll introduce me to questions I haven't yet thought to ask.
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With all the luck and support I've had, my second novel, Something of Me in You—about love, caste, colorism, and violent religious fundamentalism in India, and racism and xenophobia in post-Donald Trump America—is contracted with Ghosh Literary Agency and under submission. Please wish me luck! I’m currently working on two other novels about the mysteriousness of family and mysterious families.
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In Spring 2026 I will be the Invited Writer in Residence, at the Pearl S. Buck Residency, Randolph College.
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Visit me at Amazon, Author’s Guild, X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Goodreads, Substack, Medium, Bluesky, YouTube, Tumblr, and my Blog.
