Kavita Das

Kavita Das is the author of Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar (Harper Collins India, June 2019), the life story of Grammy-nominated Hindustani singer Lakshmi Shankar. Her next book is Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues, (Beacon Press, October 2022) which grew out of her popular “Writing About Social Issues” nonfiction seminar, offered at the New School. Kavita worked in social change for close to fifteen years, addressing issues ranging from community and housing inequities, to public health disparities, to racial injustice. At the root of both her writing and social change work is Kavita’s desire to provoke thought and engender change by recognizing and revealing the true ways in which culture, race, and gender intersect especially when it comes to societal inequities. Kavita has been a regular contributor to NBC News Asian America, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Rumpus. In addition, her work has been published in WIRED, Poets & Writers, Catapult, LitHub, Tin House, Longreads, Kenyon Review, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Guernica, McSweeney’s, Fast Company, Quartz, Colorlines, Romper, and elsewhere. She was nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize. Kavita’s essays on social issues have been included in two creative writing textbooks. Kavita received a B.A. in Urban Studies from Bryn Mawr College and a M.B.A. in Marketing from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives in Putnam County, NY.