Join us for an evening with Austin-based poet Usha Akella, who will be in conversation with Chaitali Sen.

Usha Akella has authored four books of poetry and one chapbook, and has scripted and produced one musical drama. Her latest poetry book was published by Sahitya Akademi, India’s highest literary authority, in 2019. She recently earned an 2018 MSt. in Creative Writing from Cambridge University, UK. Her work has been included in the Harper Collins’ Anthology of Indian English Poets. She was selected as a Creative Ambassador for the City of Austin for 2019 and 2015, and has been published in numerous literary journals. She is the founder of ‘Matwaala,’ the first South Asian Diaspora Poets Festival in the US. She has won literary prizes (Nazim Hikmet award, Open Road Review Prize, and Egan Memorial Prize), and earned finalist status in a few US based contests. She has written a few quixotic nonfiction prose pieces published in The Statesman and India Currents. She is the founder of the Poetry Caravan in New York and Austin, which takes poetry readings to the disadvantaged in women’s shelters, senior homes, and hospitals. Several hundreds of readings have reached these venues via this medium.

Chaitali Sen is a writer and educator based in Austin, Texas. She is the author of the novel The Pathless Sky, and numerous stories and essays which have appeared or are forthcoming in Catapult, Colorado Review, Ecotone, LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, New Ohio Review, and other journals. She is the founder of the interview series Borderless: Conversations on Art, Action, and Justice.