Sayantani Dasgupta

Born in Calcutta and raised in New Delhi, Sayantani Dasgupta is the author of the essay collection Brown Women Have Everything: Essays on (Dis)comfort and Delight. Previous books include the short story collection Women Who Misbehave, the chapbook The House of Nails: Memories of a New Delhi Childhood, and Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, & the In-Between, a Finalist for the Foreword Indies Awards for Creative Nonfiction. She has been awarded a Centrum Foundation Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and the WILMA Woman of the Year award in Arts for 2022. Two of her essays, “Rinse, Repeat” and "In Case of an Active Shooter Attack" were named Notable Essays of 2023 and 2022 by Best American Essays. She is a contributing editor for Assay: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction and the founder of Write Wilmington. An Associate Professor of Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington, Sayantani has also taught writing in India, Italy, Colombia, and Mexico.

Education

M.F.A. in Creative Writing, University of Idaho.
M.A. in History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
B.A. in History, University of Delhi.

Specialization in Teaching

Because I have studied in both India and the US, my teaching philosophy is an amalgam. My Indian professors taught me to read the text very closely, go above and beyond what was assigned for homework, and see the text as a component of a broader conversation. From my American professors, I learned to trust my voice and vision, be unafraid to experiment, and explore both inside and outside the classroom, whether through films, interviews, or field trips.
I read and write daily, be it in my journal, or blog, or toward my next book. I share my writing goals and failures with my students to remind them (and me) that I hold myself to a high standard, and of the importance of routine work. I am fascinated by all the building blocks that make up the craft of writing, and irrespective of the course, my students write for 10-15 minutes every time we meet. By the end of the semester, each of them ends up with anything between 20-40 pages of raw material that can then be shaped and polished further.

In recent times, some of the courses I have had most fun teaching include:
CRW 580: Reading & Writing Horror
CRW 545: Eating Our World & Writing about Food
CRW 550: Inventive Wonders: Workshop in Lyric & Hermit Crab Essays
CRW 420: The Contemporary Essay
CRW 420: Boundaries & Beyond: Writing About Familiar, Foreign & Forbidden Places
CRW 325: Issues of Diversity in Contemporary Publishing

Research Interests

Creative Nonfiction, Literary Fiction, South Asian History and Literature, Indian Cinema, World Religions, Fairy Tales, Folk Lore and Mythology.

Professional Service

• Advisory Board Member, Great Circle Books, University of North Carolina Press, August
2022 to present.
• Contributing Editor (Interviews) for Assay: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction
• Textbook reviewer for Creative Writing and Literary Studies, Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing, UK, Fall 2023.
• Founder, Write to Imagine, in partnership with Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC, Fall 2021 and Spring 2022. The goal of this initiative was to create professional opportunities for Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) in the greater Wilmington community. The GTAs submitted proposals for creative writing classes geared towards three different age groups. Three proposals were selected by the Museum staff and offered as classes and the GTA instructors received compensation.
• As Mentor for Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ Writer to Writer Mentorship Program. I have served thrice and mentored the following writers of South Asian origin: Nandini Sikand (summer 2023), Vimla Sriram (fall 2020), and Raksha Vasudevan (fall 2019).

Community Engagement

• Founder and Faculty Coordinator, Write Wilmington , Fall 2021 to present. I started this program after hearing from multiple students and friends they were struggling to maintain a writing routine because of the social isolation brought on by the Covid-19 Pandemic. Currently in its seventh season, Write Wilmington is a community-based initiative to foster a culture of free and accessible writing workshops across the globe via classes hosted on Zoom and led by UNCW’s creative writing faculty, friends, alumni, and current grad students. Themes vary from season to season: Writers at Play, Nine Stories, etc. Since its inception, Write Wilmington has served close to 2,000 writers from all over the U.S. as well as other countries.

Honors & Awards

• Notable Best American Essays 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick for my essay “In Case of An Active Shooter,” published in Michigan Quarterly Review literary magazine.
• Winner, WILMA Woman of the Year in Arts, 2022.
• Notable Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee for my essay “Rinse, Repeat,” published in Chautauqua literary magazine.
• Winner, Write India Season 3, for the short story, “Chain Reaction,” June 26, 2020. Write India is organized by Times of India Books, the books division of India’s largest English-language newspaper, The Times of India.
• Pushcart Prize nomination by Arkansas International for the essay, “The Church of Santa Maria Nuova,” Spring 2021.