Bhanu Kapil

Bhanu Kapil (born 1968) is a British-born poet and author of Indian descent. She is best known for her books The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, Incubation: A Space for Monsters (2006), and Ban en Banlieue (2015).

In 2020, Kapil won one of eight Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes.

Personal life and education Kapil was born in 1968 to Indian parents. In 1990, she moved to the United States, She has cited Salman Rushdie's 1980 Booker Prize win as a formative experience for her, saying "Perhaps then, for the first time, I understood that someone like me: could. Could look like me and write." In early 2015, The Believer held a round-table discussion of her work over the course of three days.

2009's Humanimal: A Project for Future Children took its inspiration from the nonfiction account of Amala and Kamala, two girls found "living with wolves in colonial Bengal." Douglas A. Martin has described Incubation: A Space For Monsters as "a feminist, post-colonial On the Road." Kapil also contributed the introduction to Amina Cain's short story collection I Go To Some Hollow. Her public readings have elements of performance art. Her poetry appeared in a collection edited by Brian Droitcour that was produced as part of the New Museum's 2015 Triennial.

Aside from writing, Kapil has taught at Naropa University,

In 2019, Kapil received a year-long fellowship at the University of Cambridge; after the fellowship, she remained as an artist by-fellow at Churchill College. Ban en Banlieue was named one of Time Out New York 's most anticipated books of early 2015.

In 2019, Kapil received the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellowship from the University of Cambridge.

In March 2020 Kapil was awarded one of eight Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes. She has also received the Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors.

Publications Books The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, Kelsey Street Press, 2001, Incubation: A Space for Monsters, Leon Works, 2006, Humanimal: A Project for Future Children, Kelsey Street Press, 2009, Schizophrene, Nightboat Books, 2011, Ban en Banlieue, Nightboat Books, 2015, entre-Ban, Vallum, 2017, How to Wash a Heart, Liverpool University Press, 2020,

Chapbooks Autobiography of a Cyborg, Leroy, 2000. Water Damage: A Map of Three Black Days, Corollary Press, 2008. Treinte Ban: A psychiatric handbook to accompany a work undone, New Herring Press, 2014.