Born to immigrant parents from India, Chaya Bhuvaneswar grew up in a multilingual home. These roots, the roots of stories, nourished her as a writer.

While attending Yale, she published and placed in writing contests including the Yale Daily News. She learned pre-colonial, pre-European ways of thinking about South Asia and the Indian subcontinent by studying Sanskrit and literary theory at Oxford. 

Chaya became a published writer during her Masters in South Asian Studies, emphasis on creative writing teaching and publication, seeing her work included in anthologies. She joined the Philly writing scene, performing her work at The Asian Arts Initiative.

At Stanford, where she spent happy years in northern California, she joined South Asian women’s organizations like Maitri and Narika. She again combined her love of writing with public health, starting workshops in Sikh gurdwaras, Santa Clara community centers, and outside of Silicon Valley factories on public and preventive health particularly for immigrant workers, many of whom were either undocumented or on limited H1B visas, fearful about coming forward to benefit from free mammogram and Pap smear programs and other initiatives including in mental health treatment in California. In California, Chaya performed her work on stage at Apature, the arts festival initiative of the Kearny Street Workshop, one of the most established Asian American arts organizations in the US.

Chaya received a National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholars grant to study the poetry of Indian religious music as performed in diverse settings in New York and California. This plus her knowledge of Sanskrit poetry from her time at Oxford has led her to establish a voice as an innovative and strikingly imagistic poet, recognized with publications in The Awl, Natural Bridge, The Florida Review, Ithaca Lit and apt magazine and rkvry, as well as earning honors in contests judged by Cornelius Eady and Sherman Bitsui and connected with Patricia Spears Jones. 

You can hear Chaya reading one of her stories at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn.

Chaya values literary community, appreciates book sellers and other authors, and contributes to many literary magazines as well as being a Joyland Magazine Consulate Editor (Prose). To submit your work to Chaya as an editor click here. To set up an event for an author to be in conversation with Chaya, check out the Events page or Contact Chaya.