Meena Kandasamy Writer. Anti-caste Activist. Poet. Translator. Tamil Woman.

Meena Kandasamy's Biography Meena Kandasamy (1984) is an Indian-born poet, fiction writer and translator. Her debut poetry collection, Touch, with a foreword by Kamala Das, was published in August 2006. Two of her poems, Mascara, and My Lover Speaks of Rape, have won first prizes in all-India poetry competitions. Her poetry has been published in various journals, including The Little Magazine, Kavya Bharati, Indian Literature, Poetry International Web and the Quarterly Literary Review, Singapore. Her political poetry arises out of the pressing responsibility to ensure that language is not at the mercy of the oppressors since language is the first site for all subjugation.

She edited The Dalit, a bi-monthly alternative English magazine that reflected the voice of Dalits (India's ex-untouchables) in its first year of publication from 2001 to 2002. Her essays have been published in The Hindu Literary Review, Tehelka, Communalism Combat and Biblio. Her work as the editor of a Dalit magazine and her association with the Liberation Panthers (a militant activist Dalit organisation) has honed her awareness of what it means to be a woman in a caste-ridden nation. Significant among her dozen translations are the writings and speeches of Liberation Panthers leader Thol. Thirumavalavan (Talisman: Extreme Emotions of Dalit Liberation (2003) and Uproot Hindutva: The Fiery Voice of the Liberation Panthers (2004)). She has also translated the poetry and fables of Kasi Anandan, the poet laureate of Tamil Eelam.

She was one of the 21 woman writers from South Asia whose short-stories were selected for 21 under 40: New Fiction for a New Generation, the Zubaan Anthology of Young Women Writing published in February 2007. Her collection of short-stories, Black Magic, will be published later this year.

She served on the three-member jury of the One Billion Eyes Documentary Film Festival held in August 2007 on the theme of Caste. She was one of the 25 participating poets in Poetry with Prakriti, a poetry festival organized by the Prakriti Foundation and the Landmark bookstore-chain in December 2007.

At present, she is revising her first novel The Gypsy Goddess, and is also working on her doctorate on Caste in the Indian Language Classroom. She is a contributing editor to the literary magazine Muse India and writes for the Indian feminist colla-blog Ultra Violet. She blogs at http://meenu.wordpress.com

Upcoming Works

  • The Gypsy Goddess (a novel)

    Black Magic (a collection of short-stories)

Nickname

  • Mee

Publishers

  • Frog Books
    Zubaan
    Stree-Samya

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