K. Srilata

K. Srilata (also known as Srilata Krishnan) is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and academic based in Chennai. Srilata has authored seven volumes of poetry, five books of translation from Tamil to English, a novel and a non-fiction book. Her works include the poetry collections Footnotes to the Mahabharata (Westland/Context), Three Women in a Single-Room House (Sahitya Akademi) and The Unmistakable Presence of Absent Humans (Poetrywala), the non-fiction book This Kind of Child: The ‘Disability’ Story (Westland), as well as the novel Table for Four (Penguin).

Srilata’s most recent collection of poems, Footnotes to the Mahabharata, is made up of five poetic sequences which explore the interior lives of Alli, Hidimbi, Draupadi, Gandhari and Kunti and is shaped around what remains unexamined or invisible within extant interpretations of the epic. The poems use as their starting point, off-centre interpretations, revised and altered tales. Footnotes to the Mahabharata opens with a sequence based on Alli, a character exclusive to the Tamil, Dravidian tradition, not on the map of the mainstream Mahabharata. The book inspired a performative reading by Madras Players, a theatre group based in Chennai.

Srilata’s debut novel Table for Four was long-listed in 2009 for the Man Asian Literary Prize and published in 2011. The novel tells the story of Maya, Sandra and Derek, graduate students at UC Santa Cruz who have been house-mates for three year as they prepare to sit down at the tortoise listening table for dinner with Uncle Prithvi, the house-owner. The novel is a rumination of the burden of secrets and the pain of remembering and accepting the betrayals, loss, and tragedies of our lives.

In This Kind of Child: The `Disability’ Story, Srilata brings together first-person accounts, interviews and short fiction which open up for us the experiential worlds of persons with disabilities and those who love them. The book offers a multi-perspectival understanding of the disability experience—its emotional as well as imagined truth, both to the disabled themselves as well as to those closely associated with them.

The poems in Srilata’s collection Three Women in a Single-Room House, published by Sahitya Akademi in 2023, trace the bitter-sweet shape of family and female lineage. The poems in The Unmistakable Presence of Absent Humans play with the idea of absent presences, grief, loss and endurance.

Srilata’s first book of poems, Seablue Child, was published in 2000, followed by Arriving Shortly (2011). Other poetry collections include Writing Octopus and Bookmarking the Oasis (2015). Srilata also co-edited and co-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. Along with Subashree Krishnaswamy, she edited Short Fiction from South India (OUP), a reader for undergraduate students. Yoda Press published an Indo-Irish collaborative poetry anthology All the Worlds Between that Srilata co-edited with Fiona Bolger. Srilata is also co-editor (along with Swarnalatha Rangarajan) of Lifescapes: Interviews with Contemporary Women Writers from Tamil Nadu (Women Unlimited).

Srilata's published translations include the Tamil writer R. Vatsala's 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.

Srilata’s poems have been widely anthologized and featured in collections such as The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, The Penguin Book of Indian Poets, The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry, A Poem a Day, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English and The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City.

Srilata was awarded the Fulbright fellowship, the Charles Wallace fellowship and a foundation project by the India Foundation for the Arts to support the research for her book of poems Footnotes to the Mahabharata. She has been writer in residence at the University of Sterling, Scotland courtesy the Charles Wallace writing grant, at the Yeonhui Art Space, Seoul and at Sangam House, India. As part of a Feminist Poets’ Summit project, Srilata was commissioned by the Goethe-Institut Chennai in cooperation with the Chennai Photo Biennale to write poetry. Her poems have been translated into Tamil, Hindi and Korean.

Srilata has been a participant speaker at several literary festivals including the Jaipur Literary Festival, the Hindu Lit for Life, the Seoul International Writers Festival, the Sahitya Akademi’s International Literature Festival, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, the Bangalore Literary Festival, the Bengaluru Poetry Festival and the Hyderabad Literary Festival, among others.

Srilata's 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).

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, she has taught courses and workshops in Creative Writing at various institutes and universities including at the Chennai Mathematical Institute and Ahmedabad University. She is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at Shiv Nadar University, Chennai and adjunct Professor at the Chennai Mathematical Institute.