Indian American author, literary translator, book critic, creative writing instructor, and founder of We Are All Translators and Historical Fiction Craft Notes. Ph.D. (literature) student at the University of Texas at Dallas.
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Bio (informal)
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A few more professional hats I’ve worn: teacher, saleswoman, waitress, nightclub doorwoman (yes, really), bartender, engineer, marketing executive, management consulting executive, financial advisor, yoga instructor, podcaster, digital media startup founder, and literary editor.
My twenties and thirties were about the immigrant hustle: leaving India, living and working across five countries, thirteen cities, and sixteen homes.
My forties were about the writing and translating hustle: leaving my Silicon Valley career, running four fairly popular digital magazines (two of them concurrently), publishing three critically-acclaimed books (two of them in the same year, on different continents), publishing 100+ bylines at venues like NPR, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, teaching creative writing workshops, getting married, becoming a dog mommy, and—yes, wait for it—living and working across two countries, five cities, and six homes.
I hope my fifties will involve less moving and more books. To that end, I’m starting a five-year Ph.D. program in literature and translation studies at the University of Texas, Dallas, in Fall 2023.
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Work Portfolio
Bio (short version)
Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, and book critic. She has taught creative writing at Writing Workshops Dallas and the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship Program. She resides in the Dallas, Texas, area and is currently a Ph.D. student of literature at the University of Texas at Dallas. Find her at https://jennybhattwriter.com. Sign up for her popular, free newsletters: We Are All Translators and Historical Fiction Craft Notes.
See a standard and longer version of the bio below. Message here. Media friends: please go here.
I aim to be the kind of diasporic writer who’s truly transnational, who has immersed themselves in and studied both worlds of their hyphenated identities. A writer whose art can speak for both their peoples. A writer who can honor, not fetishize or exoticize, what they’ve left behind while also embracing what they call home now.
~Jenny Bhatt, Keynote speech at the Qissa Literature Festival, Sophia College (Autonomous), Mumbai (February 17, 2022)
Bio (standard version)
Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, and book critic. She has taught creative writing at Writing Workshops Dallas and the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship Program. She was also the founder of Desi Books (March 2020 to January 2023), a global forum for showcasing South Asian literature from the world over. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student of literature at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Her debut story collection, Each of Us Killers: Stories (7.13 Books; Sep 2020), won a 2020 Foreword INDIES award. Her literary translation, Ratno Dholi: Dhumketu’s Best Short Stories (HarperCollins India; Oct 2020), was shortlisted for the 2021 PFC-VoW Book Awards. The US edition of her Dhumketu translation, The Shehnai Virtuoso and Other Stories, was released in July 2022. One of her short stories was included in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021. Her fiction has appeared in multiple other anthologies too.
Her nonfiction has been published in various venues including NPR, The Guardian, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, The Atlantic, Publishers Weekly, Dallas Morning News, Literary Hub, Poets & Writers, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Star Tribune, and more.
She resides in the Dallas, Texas area. Find her at https://jennybhattwriter.com. Sign up for her popular, free newsletters: We Are All Translators and Historical Fiction Craft Notes.
See a longer version of the bio below. Message here. Media friends: please go here.
Therefore, a literary translation like this collection seeks to be a mode of recovery and reclamation. It hopes to be a disruptive intervention in cultural discourse. Most of all, it aspires to be a glorious revival of diverse, almost-lost literary traditions such that, if transplanted with care and attention, they might bear rich, new fruit.
~Jenny Bhatt, Breaking Down the Translation Pyramid: On Translating Dhumketu’s Pioneering Short Stories from Gujarati, Literary Hub (August 01, 2022)
Bio (long version)
Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, and book critic. She has taught fiction at Writing Workshops Dallas and the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship Program. She was also the founder of Desi Books (March 2020 to January 2023), a global forum for showcasing South Asian literature from the world over. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student of literature at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Her debut story collection, Each of Us Killers: Stories (7.13 Books; Sep 2020), won a 2020 Foreword INDIES award in the Short Stories category and was a finalist in the Multicultural Adult Fiction category. Her literary translation, Ratno Dholi: Dhumketu’s Best Short Stories (HarperCollins India; Oct 2020), was shortlisted for the 2021 PFC-VoW Book Awards for English Translation from Regional Languages. The US edition of her Dhumketu translation, The Shehnai Virtuoso and Other Stories, was released in July 2022.
Her non-fiction has appeared in the following venues: NPR, The Guardian, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, The Atlantic, Publishers Weekly, Dallas Morning News, Literary Hub, Longreads, Poets & Writers, The Millions, Electric Literature, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Star Tribune, Guernica, The Rumpus, Kenyon Review, PopMatters, Scroll.in, and more.
Her fiction has been published in Amazon’s Day One Literary Journal, Gravel Magazine, Lunch Ticket, Hofstra’s Windmill, Eleven Eleven Journal, Hot Metal Bridge, Jet Fuel Review, Kweli Journal, Five:2:One, The Indian Quarterly, York Literary Review (UK), The Nottingham Review (UK), Litro UK, The Vignette Review, etc. Her short stories have been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and the Best American Short Stories anthology. She has been a Best of the Net anthology finalist. One of her stories was included in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021. Her fiction has appeared in multiple other anthologies too.
Her translation work has appeared in Words Without Borders, Asymptote Journal, and Waxwing Magazine.
Her translation of the celebrated Gujarati writer Varsha Adalja’s award-winning novel, Crossroad, is upcoming in 2024.
Having lived and worked her way around India, England, Germany, Scotland, and various parts of the US, she now lives in a suburb of Dallas, Texas.
Find her at https://jennybhattwriter.com. Sign up for her popular, free newsletters: We Are All Translators and Historical Fiction Craft Notes.
Message here. Media friends: please go here.
Two things, I know now, can definitely be true at the same time: an emerging writer can also be a middle-aged writer.
~Jenny Bhatt, ‘Emerging’ as a Writer — After 40', Longreads (November 28, 2018)
Jenny Bhatt is an author, a literary translator, and a book critic. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student of literature at the University of Texas at Dallas. She has taught creative writing at Writing Workshops Dallas and the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship Program. Sign up for her free newsletters, We Are All Translators and/or Historical Fiction Craft Notes. Jenny lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Texas. (Photo Credit: Pixel Voyage Photography / Arushi Gupta)
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