ABOUT

I’m Swati (she/they). I’m a writer based in Brooklyn, on unceded Lenape land.

At the core of my work is a constant grapple with embodiment. I am interested in both the burden and beauty of inhabiting a feminine body in the world. My work asks: what is the difference between trying to get away from ourselves, and arriving into ourselves? And then, what does living through this ethos actually look like? To me, it means deep-cut explorations into real fears rooted in old stories, mythologies, cycles of trauma, and neuroses. As Sylvia Plath says, “I am, I am, I am”. In response, as a queer femme of color, I ask: How radical is personhood?

I am currently at work on my first novel, titled “This Mirror is a Knife”, which was longlisted for the 2024 Granum Prize. I am a 2025 AAWW Margins Fellow and a 2025 Periplus Fellow. I have received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Tin House, the Kenyon Review, Kweli Journal, and more. In addition, I have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. I was a 2023 finalist of the Frontier Global Poetry Prize, a runner-up of the So to Speak contest in fiction and a winner of the Planet Detroit National Poetry Month contest.

In the margins of my life, I make space for running, cat-tending, tarot reading, and being generally very emotional.