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). She writes mostly in English, sometimes in Bengali, and has learnt French and Latin.
Her works explore intersectional dynamics in class and caste, geopolitical strife, feminisation of conflict and structures of oppression through speculative fiction, magic realism and experimental prose.
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.
Having a refugee family history, she is passionate about working with women and children refugees of displaced diaspora in order to collect the narratives and folklore of their communities.
Roles
Current and past:
Fiction Editor - Mithila Review (2020-2021)
Research intern for Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (2022)
Screenwriter - Hand Shadowgraphy Videos by Amar Sen (Bangladesh, Myanmar, India) (2018-present)
Scholarship alumna - SUISS Creative writing (July 2019)
Judge - AKS International Slam 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
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.
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.
Rupsa Dey believes in the power of language and cats, and is only allergic to the latter.
She believes that if the boundaries of language need to break in order to accommodate the human experience, then she must direct herself to that purpose.
She never says 'No' to tea and if given a chance, would like to believe in a world without borders.