Biography.guide
Home › People › Novelist › Tanaïs
Portrait of Tanaïs

Tanaïs

b. 1982

American writer and perfumer

Don't just read it — keep itBiographies to ownE-book · Audio · Video From $7 →

About Tanaïs

Born 1982. Tanaïs is an American novelist, perfumer, memoirist, mixed-media artist and writer.

Tanaïs ( Tanwi Nandini Islam) is an American writer and perfumer. They are the founder of the Brooklyn-based beauty and fragrance company TANAÏS. They are of Bangladeshi descent.

Born in Illinois, they spent their childhood in various cities such as Houston, Columbia, and St. Louis, before settling in Brooklyn. They received an AB in women's studies with a focus on performance art and Asian American studies at Vassar College and a MFA in creative writing at Brooklyn College.

Career

Tanaïs first worked in New York City as a community organizer at Make the Road New York, a non-profit organization based in Bushwick, Brooklyn to empower working class communities. Later in 2006 in New Delhi, India through the William J. Clinton Fellowship for Service, they started writing their first draft of their debut novel Bright Lines. The novel was named finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize, and the Edmund White Award for debut fiction.

While writing Bright Lines, Tanaïs grew interested in olfaction and started their own botanically based perfume and candle line Hi Wildflower Botanica, now renamed Studio Tanaïs.

Tanaïs's 2022 memoir, In Sensorium, won the Kirkus Prize for nonfiction.

Publications 2015: Bright Lines, Penguin Books, 2022: In Sensorium: Notes For My People, Harper Books,

Biography shop

Don’t just read it —
keep it.

Full-length biographies made to live with: read them, listen on the way to work, watch them tonight.

  • E-book
  • Audio
  • Video
Browse the shop — from $7

Instant download · yours to keep · every purchase keeps this site free

Important facts

Birth century
Nationality
Education
Brooklyn College, Vassar College
Also known as
Tanwi Nandini Islam

People in Tanaïs's life

Named in this biography and alive at the same time

Contemporaries

People whose lives overlapped Tanaïs's

Frequently asked questions

Who is Tanaïs?

American writer and perfumer

When was Tanaïs born?

Tanaïs was born on 5 October 1982 in Carbondale.

What is Tanaïs's occupation?

Tanaïs is a novelist, perfumer, memoirist, mixed-media artist and writer.

What nationality is Tanaïs?

Tanaïs is American.

Sources & further reading

· Wikipedia: Tanaïs

· Wikidata: Q53411067

· DBpedia: Tanwi Nandini Islam

Cite this page

APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Tanaïs. https://biography.guide/tanais/

MLA: "Tanaïs." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/tanais/.

Chicago: "Tanaïs." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/tanais/.

Data last updated: 2026-09-22 · Spot an error? Report a correction.

Page generated 2026-09-27 05:02 UTC