Bhaskar Sunkara

Bhaskar Sunkara (born June 20, 1989) is an American political writer. He is the founding editor of Jacobin, the president of The Nation, and publisher of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy. He is a former vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality, as well as a columnist for The Guardian US.

Early life Sunkara was born in the United States to parents of Indian ancestry who had immigrated to the US from Trinidad and Tobago a year before he was born. His father was a Telugu migrant from Andhra Pradesh while his mother's family had migrated to the island in the 19th century as indentured labourers from Punjab and Bihar.

Sunkara credits his politicization to his reading as a teenager. From George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, he developed an interest in Leon Trotsky, reading his autobiography and Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography. He then progressed to the New Left, including thinkers such as Lucio Magri, Ralph Miliband, Perry Anderson and the journal New Left Review.

Sunkara joined the Democratic Socialists of America at the age of 17, becoming editor of the DSA youth section's blog The Activist. He went on to study history at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he conceived the idea of Jacobin. After his sophomore year, he missed two semesters due to illness, during which time he read Marxist works.

The New York Times interviewed Sunkara in January 2013, commenting on Jacobin unexpected success and engagement with mainstream liberalism. In late 2014, he was interviewed by New Left Review on the political orientation and future trajectory of the publication

Sunkara writes for Vice magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. In June 2023, Sunkara led The Nation 's relaunch of Bookforum magazine.

Awards and recognition In 2020, Sunkara was named to the Fortune "40 Under 40" list under the "Government and Politics" category. In 2026, the Broadbent Institute and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung named Bhaskar Sunkara the winner of that year's Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize.