Rupsa Dey
Author
Brief introduction
Rupsa is an Indian author whose creative writing career started at a young age when she won the Bal Shree Presidential honour in creative writing (2012).
Her works explore intersectional dynamics in class and caste, geopolitical strife, feminisation of conflict and structures of oppression.
Rupsa has finished her Master’s in English Literature from Jadavpur University (India, 2020) and is an advocate for Dalit and LGBTQ+ lives and has presented papers in Dalit History Month, JUDE 2017. Her story has been longlisted for the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize the 2023 Toto Funds the Arts awards. Currently she is a fiction fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Having a refugee family history, she is passionate about working with women and children refugees of displaced diaspora.
Roles
Current and past:
Fiction fellow - Iowa Writers' Workshop, Jasubhai and Tara Mehta, Sonny Mehta fellowships (2023-2025)
Fiction fellow - South Asia Speaks, with mentor Aanchal Malhotra (2023)
Scholar for Peace and Conflict Studies - Kulturstdier, Oslo Metropolitan University (Spring 2023)
Citizen Historian - 1947 Partition Archive, Stanford University Libraries (2022)
Fiction Editor - Mithila Review (2020-2021)
Research intern for Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (2022)
Scholarship alumna - SUISS Creative writing (July 2019)
Screenwriter - Hand Shadowgraphy Videos by Amar Sen (Bangladesh, Myanmar, India) (2018-present)
Judge - AKS International Poetry Fest (Sep 2020)
Honours Alumna, BA, MA - JU English (2015-2020)
Awardee, creative writing - National Bal Shree Honour (2012)
Publications / Achievements
Longlisted for Commonwealth Short Story Prize, 2022
Longlisted for the Toto Funds the Arts award, 2023
The Polis Project (New York City, USA) - ARBITRARILY DETAINED UNDER PUBLIC SAFETY ACT: THE CASE OF JAVAID AHMAD PARRAY - Reportage on custodial violence suffered by Kashmiri youth and its economic impact on the state.
Third Lane Magazine (Kolkata, India) - Where Do The Rain Clouds Go? - Literary short story written as a protest against the increasing Aryanisation of India, the detention camps in Assam and culture erasure.
The Dark Magazine (Maryland, USA) - I was a girl once but I slipped - Magic realist short story on borders and the disruption of lives that they cause.
Clarkesworld Magazine (New Jersey, USA) - The Land of Eternal Jackfruits - Science fiction short story on the importance of storytelling and oral history in a post digital world.
Muse India (Hyderabad, India) - The Moon, the Babbit and all of God’s creatures - Magic realist story on motherhood, schizophrenia and acceptance.
Kalicalypse - Future Fiction (Italy) - Anamnesis - Science Fiction short story written against megacorporations and consumerism.
Helter Skelter Magazine (India) - The Abstraction of Desire - Interview with Tejaswini Apte-Rahm, the author of The Secret of More.
Northern Light 8 (Edinburgh, Scotland) - Fatima Walks Along The Pier - Poetry on survival and resilience in a geopolitically fraught environment.
Mountain Ink (Kashmir) - Borders in My Backyard - Poetry written as a protest against the Indian colonisation of Kashmir and the human cost of war.
Plato's Caves Online (Kolkata, India) - Set of 3 poems on brutalities against women.
Homebound: ঘরে ফেরার গান (Kolkata) - Father India - Poetry written against the treatment of migrant workers by the Indian govt. In the pandemic situation.
TTIS - The Telegraph (Kolkata) - Poetry written on the subject of time.
Dolna (Bengali, Nadia, India) - Bengali short story on oral traditions.