Rochelle Potkar

Rochelle Potkar is an Indian writer. Her work includes short stories and poetry. She was a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 2015, and a Charles Wallace Writer's fellow at the University of Stirling, Scotland in 2016-17. She is the founder of the Arcs-of-a-Circle artists' residency program. She moved to Mumbai in 1998. After visiting the Tapi estuary at Surat in 2007, she wrote the story "Tropical Estuary." Her first book of short fiction, The Arithmetic of Breasts and Other Stories, was self-published in 2014 and shortlisted for The Digital Book of the Year Award 2014, by Publishing Next, Goa. In 2014, she was one of the founders of Cappuccino Readings (CR), which organized poetry readings in Mumbai. Around this time, she also participated in Poetry Couture, an association formed to promote poetry readings in India, and was co-editor of Neesah Magazine.

In 2015, she was selected to participate as a writer-in-residence in the 2015 Fall residency program of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Her first book of poetry, Four Degrees of Separation, was published in 2016. In 2016, two of her poems were included in the anthology 40 under 40: an Anthology of Post-Globalization Poetry.

She was the 2016-2017 Charles Wallace Writer's fellow at the University of Stirling, Scotland.

Rochelle practices and promotes the Japanese short poetry form haibun through workshops. In 2018, she published a collection of haibun, Paper Asylum. In his blog review of Paper Asylum, the poet Jayant Kashyap called Potkar "a wonderful weaver of stories" for her "very reasonably resonant" poetry. In 2018, a poem she wrote during her Iowa residency was adapted into a film for the Visible Poetry Project.

She co-edited the 2018 Goan-Irish anthology, Goa: A Garland of Poems, with Gabriel Rosenstock. Her collection of short stories, Bombay Hangovers, was published by Vishwakarma Publications in 2021. Her short story "Honour" was included in The Punch Magazine’s Anthology of New Writing: Select Short Stories by Women Writers, also published in 2021.

As actor Rochelle played a character role in the Tamil feature-length film, Taramani, directed by Ram.

Selected work Poetry Four Degrees of Separation, Paperwall, March 2016 Paper Asylum, Copper Coin Publishing, May 2018

Short stories The Arithmetic of Breasts And Other Stories, CreateSpace, 2014, Rochelle Potkar, 2019

Bombay Hangovers, Vishwakarma Publications

Anthologies 40 Under 40: An Anthology of Post-Globalisation, Poetrywalla, 2016 The Best Asian Short Stories, Kitab International, 2017 Goa: A Garland of Poems, The Onslaught Press, 2017 Iowa River: A Selection of Contemporary International Poetry 100 Poems Are Not Enough, Walking BookFairs, 2018 Writing Language, Culture, and Development: Africa Vs Asia: Volume 1, 2018 The Punch Magazine Anthology of New Writing: Select Short Stories by Women Writers, Niyogi Books, 2021

Honors and awards Short fiction Winner, Open Road Review Short Story Prize, 2016, for "The Leaves of the Deodar" Poetry Shortlist, the Gregory O' Donoghue International Poetry Prize, 2018, for The girl from Lal Bazaar Shortlist, 2017 Hungry Hill Writing Competition, Ireland, for "Cellular: P.O.W." Third place at the David Burland Poetry Prize 2017, for "Ground up" Winner of the 2018 Norton Girault Literary Prize for "To Daraza" First runner up, Great India Poetry Contest, for "War Specials"