Author bio:

Shlagha Borah (she/her) is from Assam, India. Her work appears/is forthcoming in POETRY, AGNI, EPOCH, Shenandoah, Best Microfiction 2025, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is a 2026-2027 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. She is the Valentines Editor at Honey Literary and Deputy Editor at The Offing. Her debut poetry manuscript, daughterline, won the Editor’s Prize from the Poetic Justice Institute at Fordham University Press, and is forthcoming Fall 2027. She’s a 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist and winner of the 2025 Miami Book Fair Poetry Emerging Writer Fellowship. Her work has been supported by Tin House, Brooklyn Poets, The Hambidge Center, The Peter Bullough Foundation, VCCA, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, among others. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and Best New Poets. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India. 

    • 2026-2027 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow, WICW

    • Finalist, 2026 Alice James Award, Alice James Books

    • Semi-finalist, 2026 Perugia Press Prize

    • Semi-finalist, 2026 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, Persea Books

    • Scholar, Tin House Summer Workshop 2025

    • Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship 2024, Finalist

    • NEA Fellowship, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, 2024

    • Finalist, Chapbook Contest, Quarter After Eight, 2024

    • Finalist, Chapbook Contest, Poetry Online, 2023

    • LGBTQIA+ Fellowship Winner, Sundress Academy for the Arts, 2022

    • Deputy Editor,The Offing, 2025-present

    • Valentines Editor, Honey Literary, 2025-present

    • Assistant Editor,The Offing, 2023-2025

    • Reading Series Coordinator, Sundress Academy for the Arts, 2023-2024

    • Assistant Poetry Editor, Grist Journal, 2022- 2023

    • Assistant Poetry Editor, Doubleback Review, 2021- 2024

    • Editor-in-Chief, Shabd Aaweg Review, 2022

    • Editorial Intern, Katha Publications, New Delhi, 2020

    • Assistant Professor,Michigan State University, Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures, 2024-present

    • Mentor, Sunhouse Summer Writing Mentorship Program

    • Instructor: Brooklyn Poets, Poets House, Kundiman, Poetry Society of New York, Brian M. Conley Young Writers’ Institute, The Bottom, SAFTA

    • Instructor of First-Year English Composition, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2023- 2024

    • Instructor for English 263: Introduction to Creative Writing, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2023

    • Tutor, Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center, University of Tennessee, 2022- 2023

    • CIRTL Practitioner, Online Teaching and Digital Learning, 2024