Shubhangi Swarup (hindi - शुभांगी स्वरुप; IPA - ʃʊbʰɑ́ŋgiː svəruːp) is an Indian author, journalist and educator. She is best known for her novel Latitudes of Longing, which was published in 2018 by HarperCollins[1] and was declared a bestseller soon after its release in India,[2][3] and Sweden.[4]
Swarup has worked as a journalist since 2008, and has written for Open,[5]The Mint[6] and also worked briefly in Zanzibar in 2011.[7]
She was the Executive Editor for ElseVR channel, India's first virtual reality (VR) journalism platform co-created by filmmaker and producer Anand Gandhi. In this capacity, she directed and wrote When Borders Move, a documentary about Hunderman, a village in Kargil that once belonged to Pakistan, was shortly in no man’s land, and now belongs to India.[8][9]
As part of the Dekeyser and Friend’s Dance Project, Swarup was part of Fire of Anatolia, a Turkish dance group consisting of 120 dancers, several choreographers and other technical staff.[10][11] Additionally, she has volunteered as a teacher for street children and low income groups, and co-founded the community group, Hamara Footpath, a Mumbai-based NGO dedicated to the educational needs of children who live on Mumbai’s streets.[12]
Swarup was born in Nashik[13] to Sunanda Swarup and Govind Swarup in 1982. She holds a Masters of Sciences degree in Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS University of London.
Notable works
Latitudes of Longing (2018)
Swarup began work on her first book in 2011.[14] In an interview published in The Hindu, she mentioned that it took her seven years to write the novel, and that her training as a journalist taught her ‘the value of deadlines, and sticking to them in the face of uncertainty.’.[15][16]
Latitudes of Longing is among the first Indian novels to engage with nature as a living, heaving entity. A tectonically active fault-line running through the Indian subcontinent holds all the stories together, in lieu of a plot. Winner of the Émile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature, the jury observed that the novel has invented a genre in itself: the fiction of nature.[17] Critically and commercially successful, the novel is in the process of being translated in 17 different languages.[18] It was selected by the GOOP book club[19] and Oprah Daily[20][21] in 2020, and its Taiwanese translation was selected by the Eslite chain of bookstores, Taipei as their November book of the month.
Shikaar (2019)
Shikaar is a Hindi play conceptualized and co-written by Swarup in 2019.[22] She wrote the story, and the play was produced by Patchworks Ensemble. Set among a group of chudails, the story explores the threat independent women pose to fascism.[23][24][25] Shikaar received both popular and critical acclaim.[26][27]
Awards
Swarup was awarded the Charles Pick Fellowship for creative writing[28] at the University of East Anglia, and the South Asia Laadli Media & Advertising Award for Gender Sensitivity twice for her articles - "The Many Perceptions of Rape", 2009[29] and "Stealth Revolution", 2012.[30]
For Latitudes of Longing, she received the following awards and nominations -
