Shikha (Saklani) Malaviya is a poet, writer & publisher, born in the U.K. and raised in Minnesota and India. Her family originally hails from Uttarakhand. Her book of historical persona poetry, Anandibai Joshee: A Life in Poems is forthcoming from HarperCollins India, in July 2023. Shikha’s previous book of poems, Geography of Tongues, was launched in December 2013, in India, to acclaim and featured in the Bangalore Literature Festival, Times of India Literary Carnival, Poetry with Prakriti & other festivals. Shikha is co-founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a literary press.

Shikha’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in journals and anthologies such as Catamaran, Plume, Prairie Schooner, and Choice Words: Writers on Abortion. She is passionate about poetry & social change and involved in the poetry community through events/initiatives such as: crowdsourcing a poem on solar energy with Greenpeace India; writing a poem for Sankara Eye Foundation’s eye donation campaign; organizing ‘100 Thousand Poets for Change—Bangalore’, in 2012 and 2013; co-founding ‘Poetry in Public India,’ a movement to bring powerful verse by Indian women to public places across India; giving a TEDx talk on ‘Poetry in Daily Life’ at TEDx Golf Links Park, Bangalore, 2013. Shikha has been a mentor for AWP’s Writer to Writer program for seven seasons and was AWP’s Kurt Brown Prize poetry judge in 2020. She was selected as Poet Laureate of San Ramon, California in 2016. Currently, Shikha is a Mosaic America Fellow committed to cultural diversity and artistic excellence in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. She is also a member of the The Writer’s Grotto.

Shikha graduated from the University of Minnesota with degrees in liberal studies, creative writing and mass communications. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her family.

Photo Credit: Arun Rajendran