Tishani Doshi is an Indian author, choreographer and dancer. After finishing school, she studied communications and management studies in North Carolina and creative writing in Baltimore. Returning to her hometown of Madras, India, she worked as a journalist. Alongside this, Doshi began training as a dancer. She became a member of an ensemble that, under the direction of the legendary choreographer Chandralekha, developed new forms of dance and performed internationally.
Doshi published her first poems in anthologies and magazines such as «The Times Literary Supplement» and «The Southern Poetry Review». In 2001 she received the British Eric Gregory Award. In 2005 her poem «The Day We Went to the Sea» won the All-India Poetry Competition. Her debut collection «Countries of the Body» (2006) was awarded the Forward Poetry Prize. The poems in this volume, dedicated to her dance teacher, are marked by an intense engagement with the body: «Dance has influenced my writing in a fundamental way, because dancing demanded more discipline of me than I would ever have demanded of myself as a writer.» Physicality recurs throughout her texts, particularly birth, sex, death and violence. The social dimension of the body are also reflected, as she repeatedly addresses gender roles and social interaction within romantic and family relationships. Her poetic texts are richly imagistic and meditative, their balanced rhythm carrying a melancholic tone: «For me, poems come from a place of melancholy. They come from pain, from something negative.» In 2012 her second poetry collection, «Everything Begins Elsewhere», was published, again placing the body at its center while probing the limits of space and time. With «Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods», first published in India in 2017 and in Britain in 2018, she presented a collection on violence against women, time and memory. The volume, together with Doshi’s accompanying dance performance of the title poem, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award in 2018. In 2019, she published the novel «Small Days and Nights». It tells the story of Grace, who, after her mother’s death, learns of the existence of her previously unknown sister Lucia, who has Down syndrome, and attempts to build a new life with her on the coast of Tamil Nadu. This was followed in 2021 by the poetry collection «A God at the Door», which turns its attention to personal, social and political crises, ecological destruction, violence and the oppression of women. It was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2021. Her fifth poetry collection, «Egrets, While War» (2026), touches on environmental loss, memory, ageing and the devastations of war. It is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2026.
Tishani Doshi lives in India.
Last update: 2026