Kavita is an award-winning Australian-Indian writer with a background working in journalism, anthropology and literature. She is the current Writer in Residence at Western Sydney University/ Westwords and the Research Fellow in the Digital and Social Media, School of Communication at University of Technology.
She was a 2018 Churchill Fellow exploring migrant and refugee narratives and has written for a range of publications including Guernica, The Guardian, The Griffith Review, Roads & Kingdoms. She was the former Editor of The Point Magazine, exploring the impact of overseas conflict on diaspora communities, and is the Creative Producer of a grassroots storytelling project, Mapping Frictions: Stories from Western Sydney.
Her first novel, Friends & Dark Shapes, will be published by Europa Editions (USA), Edizioni E/O (Italy) and Text Publishing (AUS) March 2021. She is represented by Sterling Lord Literistic Agency, New York, USA.
PANELS & GUEST SPEAKING
Kavita has spoken and run workshops for The Commonwealth Secretariat UK ( Fiji), YouTube Creators for Change, The Sydney Writers Festival, State Government, National Young Writers Festival, Newtown Festival, The Walkley's Storyology conference, and lectured at the University of Technology, Sydney and Macquarie University.
AWARDS & GRANTS
2018 Churchill Fellowship in Europe
2016 Australia Council for the Arts Development Grant for novel writing residency at San Miguel Poetry Festival, and Under the Volcano Fiction Writing, Mexico
2015 Walkley Foundation Women in Media Mentorship
2015 Multicultural NSW Unity Grant
2015 YEN Magazine Short Story Prize Finalist
2014 Scanlon Foundation Grant
2013 Australia Council for the Arts Grant
2013 Westwords Under 30 Western Sydney Writers’ Fellowship
Australia
2012 Macquarie University Anthropology Department Prize for ethnography
2012 Editors' Choice prize in the University of New South Wales Tharunka, Non-Fiction Writing Competition
2009 Winner of The Waverley Words Literary Festival Fiction Prize
2007 The Charles Sturt Foundation, Ron Camplin Academic Major Scholarship for Contribution to Media
Photo credit: Christopher Woe
