Somrita Urni Ganguly – WE Meritorious Green Heart Award 2022

For Exceptional Contribution to WE Literary Community and WE Awards

Nor’westers in Calcutta

Kalboishakhis, for me, are about smells

The smell of relief of thirsty soil,
after drinking the first few drops of rain.

The smell of night jasmines sighing at twilight, 
after Ma discards them from the bun of her hair.

Somrita Urni Ganguly is an Indian professor, and award-winning poet and literary translator. She was a Fulbright Doctoral Research Fellow at Brown University, USA, and is an alumna of the University of East Anglia’s International Literary Translation and Creative Writing Summer School. Somrita is serving as a judge for the 2021 PEN America Translation Prize, and is currently Head of the Department of English, Maharaja Manindra Chandra College, University of Calcutta. Her work has been showcased at the London Book Fair, and she has read in cities like Bloomington, Bombay, Boston, Calcutta, Cove, Delhi, Hyderabad, London, Miami, Providence, and Singapore. Somrita is the editor of the first anthology of food poems, Quesadilla and Other Adventures (2019), and has translated Firesongs (2019), Shakuni: Master of the Game (2019), and The Midnight Sun: Love Lyrics and Farewell Songs (2018), among other works.

Somrita was selected by the National Centre for Writing, UK, as an emerging translator in 2016. In 2017, she was invited as translator-in-residence at Cove Park, Scotland, and as poet-in-residence at Arcs of a Circle, Mumbai, an artistes’ residency organized by the US Consulate in Bombay. Somrita has been published in Asymptote, Words Without Borders, In Other Words, and Trinity College Dublin’s Journal of Literary Translation, University of British Columbia's Prism Magazine, among others. She has fourteen academic publications to her credit, and is a recipient of the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund Award (2013) and the Sarojini Dutta Memorial Prize (2011). Her work has been acknowledged with the WE Glowing Diamond accolade from WE Literary Community in '20.

Somrita is one of the judges for the WE Poetry Awards.

Link to video recordings of some past readings:
1. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLveD8ZdUaPFACwdGTax0QExDL4A1Yq9i5
2. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLveD8ZdUaPFCQet8HIwN3w9wPfUfWzjj8
3. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLveD8ZdUaPFBpF_pzuZsW9U80O4JFngyG
4. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLveD8ZdUaPFBR53Ef_wyuCiEfY6cVeOPf

Social Media Handles:
Facebook: @urni.g
Twitter: @blessed_damsel
Instagram: @blessed.damsel