# K. Srilata

K. Srilata (also known as Srilata Krishnan) is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and academic based in Chennai. Her poem, In Santa Cruz, Diagnosed Home Sick won the First Prize in the All India Poetry Competition (organized by the British Council and The Poetry Society (India)) in 1998. She has also been awarded the Unisun British Council Poetry Award (2007) and the Charles Wallace writing residency at the University of Sterling (2010). Her debut novel Table for Four was long-listed in 2009 for the Man Asian Literary Prize and released in 2011.
Srilata’s most recent collection of poems Three Women in a Single-Room House was published by Sahitya Akademi in 2023. Her critically acclaimed book This Kind of Child: The ‘Disability’ Story, which brought together first-person accounts, interviews and short fiction on the disability experience, was published by Westland in 2022. Srilata’s poems have been widely anthologized and featured in collections such as The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets and The Penguin Book of Indian Poets.
A Fulbright pre-doctoral scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Srilata has a masters and a PhD in Literature from the University of Hyderabad. Formerly a Professor of Literature at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Srilata took early retirement in order to focus more fully on her writing. She has been a participating writer at the Jaipur Literary Festival, the Bangalore Literary Festival, the Seoul International Writers Festival, the Sahitya Akademi’s International Literature Festival, the Hindu Lit for Life festival, the Hyderabad Literary Festival and the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival.

## Career

Her first book of poems, Seablue Child, was published in 2000, followed by Arriving Shortly (2011). Other poetry collections are Writing Octopus (2013), Bookmarking the Oasis (2015) and The Unmistakable Presence of Absent Humans (2019). Srilata also translated from Tamil to English two millennia worth of poetry titled Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry - along with Lakshmi Holmstrom and Subashree Krishnaswamy. Her other work includes translations of R. Vatsala's Tamil novels Once there was a girl (Vattathul), The Scent of Happiness (Kannukkul Satru Payanithu), a co-translation along with Shobhana Kumar of the Tamil poet Salma’s work i, Salma (Red River), and a translation of women's writing from the Self-Respect Movement The Other Half of the Coconut: Women Writing Self-Respect History. Yoda Press has published an Indo-Irish collaborative poetry anthology All the Worlds Between that Srilata co-edited with Fiona Bolger. Srilata has co-edited Lifescapes: Interviews with Contemporary Women Writers from Tamil Nadu (Women Unlimited), along with Swarnalatha Rangarajan.
Srilata has been a writer-in-residence at the University of Stirling, at Sangam House and at the Yeonhui Art Space in Seoul. Srilata co-curates the CMI Arts Initiative along with Madhavan Mukund and K.V. Subrahmanyam, apart from hosting a writing residency in partnership with Sangam House. Srilata is also part of the team that runs Yavanika Press, an e-publishing site specializing in poetry.
Srilata was previously a professor at IIT Madras where she taught Creative Writing, Fiction, Advanced English and Translation Studies. Srilata is adjunct professor at the Chennai Mathematical Institute.