The Usawa Literary Review
Usawa Literary Review is a feminist literary magazine based in Mumbai, India.
Founded in 2018 by Smita Sahay and Lavanya Shanbhogue-Arvind, Usawa – meaning equality in Swahili – publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, translations, book reviews, and interviews by and about underrepresented communities.
It produces two publications: ULR, a bi-annual themed journal, and Matchbox, a monthly digital magazine that includes regular columns and special issues focused on specific regions and communities, including the Northeast and Afghanistan.
Usawa is part of an ongoing global movement toward a more equitable world.
Team Usawa
About Smita
SMITA SAHAY served as Associate Editor for ‘Veils, Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women’. Her works have appeared in national and international journals, newspapers and anthologies. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Usawa Literary Review, and the Poetry Editor for SPEAK, the Magazine. A visiting faculty of Creative Writing at Whistling Woods International, Mumbai, she is an ISB alumna, class of 2015.
A survivor of C-PTSD, she is also the founder and Somatic therapist at Calm Space Healing, a trauma-informed therapy and healing practice.
About Babitha
BABITHA MARINA JUSTIN is an academic, poet and artist. Her poems, short stories and articles have appeared in Taylor and Francis journals, Marshal Cavendish, The Yearbook (2020, 21, 22), Singing in the Dark (Penguin), Eclectica, Esthetic Apostle, Jaggery, Fulcrum, The Scriblerus, Trampset, Constellations, Indian Literature, etc. Her books are Of Fireflies, Guns and the Hills (Poetry, 2015), I Cook My Own Feast (Poetry, 2019), salt, pepper and silverlinings: celebrating our grandmothers (an anthology on grandmothers, 2019), From Canons to Trauma (Essays, 2017), Forty Five Shades of Brown ( Poetrywala, 2023)
About Ankush
ANKUSH BANERJEE’s (he/him) debut volume of poetry, An Essence of Eternity, was published by Sahitya Akademi in 2016. He is the three time recipient of the USI Gold Medal for his essays on Military Ethics and Leadership. His poem, ‘Righteous among the Nations’ was the winner of 2019 All India Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Indian Literature, Collateral, Eclectica, Jaggery Lit, and TBLM among others, and have been anthologised in the Best Asian Poetry 2021, Yearbook of Indian Poetry 2020 & 2021, and Converse: Contemporary Poetry in English by Indians (2022). Some of his review-essays can be found at Tupelo Quarterly, Eclectica, Kitaab, and Usawa
About Sonakshi
SONAKSHI SRIVASTAVA is a writing tutor at Ashoka University, Sonepat, India.
She is one of the recipients of South Asia Speaks mentorship programme (cohort 2021), working on translating the Hindi novel, “Titli” into English under the mentorship of Arunava Sinha. She was the contributing translator columnist at “The Bilingual Window’. She was longlisted for The Stinging Fly Translation Bursary 2022, and was awarded the Katharine Bakeless Nason scholarship for the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference 2023. Her works have previously appeared in or are appearing in ASAP art, Usawa, Proseterity, The Monograph, Alipore Post, Hakara, potluck zine, orangepeel mag, Qissa mag, and Rhodora among others.
About Mandakini
Mandakini Pachauri is an India born poet and nonfiction writer living at the edge of the Viennese Woods. Presently, she interrogates the contradictions and rifts in her personal history within geopolitical regions. Sound, image, codes and languages are expressive modes of her movements in the body, mind and in writing. In a state of whiplash, entangled perhaps in broken and remembered structures – she reaches not just for terra firma but also to imagine emergent realities.
Sivakami Velliangiri
Poetry Advisor
About Sivakami
SIVAKAMI VELLIANGIRI has been included among the women poets in the History of Indian Writing in English (1980).Her online Chapbook In My Midriff https://tinyurl.com/nzk7db78 was published by Lily Literary Review. ‘How We Measured Time’ https://tinyurl.com/h38tpfz5 is her debut poetry book. Her poems appear in The Penguin Book of Indian Poets April 2022 edited by Jeet Thayil.
Nithya Mariam John
Interviews Editor
About Nithya
Nithya Mariam John is a poet, academician and translator. A fortnightly columnist in a national daily, she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, was semifinalist at Sundress Poetry Broadside Contest and shortlisted for The Brown Critique Poetry Prize. Her latest collection of verses is titled Kitchen Poems. Her scribblings have found space(s) in journals and newspapers including Sahitya Akademi Indian Literature, Malayalam Literary Survey, The Year Book of Indian Poetry, The New Indian Express, Times of India, Last Leaves, Muddy River Review, Qissa and the Alipore Post, among the others.
Our Collaborations
