Every year tells a story—I learn, grow, and feel grateful for what has come my way. This one is no exception. The Annual Writing Report 2025 captures the themes and ideas that took shape, the wishes that came true, how writing across genres drives my creative life, what helped during a crisis in my writing-life, and the moments when my words made an impact. From experiments to teamwork, this post offers a snapshot of my writing year.
Before I start, let me ask you one question: what is the difference between a Scottish writer of color and a writer based in the global south like myself? The Scottish writer explores identity, uses similar cultural references, and discusses marginalization, just like me. But are we the same? No! We are as different as indigo dye and the color of the sky. She has privileges she seldom acknowledges—grants, opportunities, funding, and a receptive market. What do I have? A “dead” economy, no funding for arts, exchange rates that make dollar reading fees nearly unaffordable, and minimal support from local publishers and readers. Nearly a million people renounced their Indian citizenship in the last five years due to these very reasons. Why do I bring this up here? Because I will stay and work here. Yet, my work is not separate from this reality; it reflects, and is shaped by, these truths and divides. Please support my work in whichever capacity you can. I am also deeply thankful to the editors, readers, subscribers, and friends who have steadfastly supported my journey. Thank you!
Artist Statement / Publication Report
january 2025
In January 2025, my work appeared in two journals—Ghost Parachute and Trampset. On January 1, 2025, my flash fiction piece “Baby Mother” was published in Ghost Parachute. Relying on implication and narrative compression, “Baby Mother” etches some contours in the liminal spaces between reality and imagination. The story resists exposition, allowing emotional tension to shape meaning. This luckily aligns with Ghost Parachute’s focus on high-impact storytelling. Having tried to get in in this publication since the very initial years of my writing life, it felt like a milestone, tbh.
Later in the month, on January 15, 2025, Trampset published my column titled “The goal isn’t to be happy with my voice. What I want is simply to have one.” This piece emphasizes the importance of authorship and self-expression, highlighting the process of claiming a voice amid internal doubt and external expectations. It contrasts the support received by authors like Jhumpa Lahiri, who has lived across continents, with Indian Booker-winning author Geetanjali Shree, touching the same issue as my introduction to this post.
Also in January, I joined the Best Small Fictions 2025 team as Assistant Editor. It was an immense honor to help shape the anthology, now published.
february 2025
In February 2025, to my delight and honor, my work appeared across multiple literary venues in diverse forms. Besides, the literary venue X-R-A-Y interviewed me on February 04, 2025.
On February 1, 2025, my short story “The ___ Woman Hears a Who” was published in Small World City Magazine–based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. This piece also turns to centering attentive, perceptive protagonists, who are societally ignored, and whose inner lives intersect with the broader social and sensory environments they navigate. The narrative bridges intimate reflection and subtle cultural observation rooted in our region and times.
Mid-month, on February 14, 2025, my creative nonfiction “Alphabetical Index of a Composite Dream” appeared in Common Ground Review; Fall/Winter 2025. In this work, I experiment (AGAIN!) with hybridity and dream logic, using non-linear associations and metaphorical indexing as formal devices to interrogate memory, identity, and the instability of narrative structures. I’m happy that it further establishes my ongoing engagement with the boundaries between genre and consciousness.
On February 17, 2025, the flash fiction “This Time, Ending Slightly Differently” was published in Fictive Dream (Flash Fiction February 2025). In under 500 words, this piece uses brevity and emotional precision while challenging traditional expectations of resolution. It also experimented with how shifts in narrative closure can reposition emotional impact.
Later in the month, on February 25, 2025, my column “WHAT TRIGGERS MY WRITING IS NEVER AN IDEA” appeared in Trampset, marking another reflective engagement with craft and creative process. In this column, I explore the often non-linear sources of inspiration reconsidering triggers not as tidy beginnings but as entangled impulses that resist facile explanation.
Also appearing in February across print and online venues was “INVISIBLE WOMAN HAS REASONS TO TAKE TIME OUT”, published in Defunkt Magazine Vol. 13 on February 26, 2025, and “All My Old and New Selves” in Clemson University-published South Carolina Review (print). Both pieces, coincidentally, trace the life of a housewife/mother, who does an extraordinary thing one ordinary day.
Collectively, my February 2025 publications were a great exhibition of what I really, and truly, hope and strive to do: versatility. I love genre diversity, experimentation with form, and thematic depth—from flash fiction’s concise emotional intensities to creative nonfiction’s reflective expansiveness and columns that interrogate the mechanics of creativity itself. Grateful for the venues that helped showcase my writing.
march 2025
If you’re here, you may be wondering why I publish these Annual Writing Reports. This is my fifth year after 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. There are 2 reasons: One, I was a student of Economics, Maths and Statistics. Tables and enumeration fascinate me and I have also been a student of accountancy–so ‘reports’ are a favorite. I want to keep track of the things that I do. You may say: Okay. But others don’t! Never seen reports from any writers, at all, across the board. That brings me to reason two. Exactly why I do these reports. I hope to inspire new and emerging writers, especially from the global south. There are links here to venues that have published me and the type of work they like. I want to share that behind these publications are hundreds of rejections. In these posts over the years, there are things that have worried me or baffled me, sharing here–so you can be cautious. You may not agree with me, but you know I’ve been honest, and my journey is out there.
In March 2025, readers and editors recognized my commitment to socio-cultural introspection within my writing practice, as well as my ease across genres and categories through pieces published in various venues. On March 8, 2025, my column “On Reversing the Legacy of Struggles for Women: One Story at a Time” appeared in Trampset. In this piece, I reflect on narrative legacies and the act of storytelling as a means of reclaiming histories and foregrounding women’s experiences. The column bridges personal inquiry with broader questions of representation. Also in March (March 31, 2025), two pieces were published that illustrate distinct facets of my work with micro-narrative and social critique. First, the article “ON DISGUISING DISTRESS” appeared in Bacopa Literary Review Blog. This essay engages with internal and external patterns of distress, probing how emotional landscapes are concealed and performed, and how subtle shifts in language can reveal deeper truths about human experience. This piece was a follow-up of my prize-winning piece “Revolver Rita” published in Bacopa Literary last year. On the same date, my microfiction “DYSTOPIA WILL BE DECIDED & DIVIDED BY WHO CAN & CANNOT AFFORD ACs” was published in Flash Frontier New Zealand. This piece uses speculative theme and employs brevity to critique climate inequity and socio-economic divides, encapsulating how oppressive systems manifest in everyday survival scenarios. I’m happy that my effort at underscoring both the urgency and the far-reaching implications of the themes was applauded by many. Across these pieces, I aimed for intersectional themes and genre fluidity, lived experiences, inequities, and hoped to explore the elasticity of language.
Joanna Theiss interviewed me for Psaltre and Lyre this month.
Also in March, I earned my first (and so far, only) royalties for my novella-in-flash “Glass/Fire”. I also joined the masthead at Iron Horse Literary Review, based out of Texas Tech University, as Associate Editor.
April 2025
April proved to be a major career milestone when my story was judged to be among the top 201 in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2025.
I turned to looking at the daily rituals of a writer and published a craft essay “How Poetry Inspires Fiction Writing” on my blog. Through an exploration of why fiction writers persist in their craft, even when the “why” remains elusive, I tap into the intimate connections between writing, vulnerability, and obsession in “What Do Fiction Writers Do All Through Poetry Month? A Broad List of Ten, Then One More” (trampset; April 06, 2025).
May 2025
In May, through microfiction and introspective prose, I investigated the tension between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the lightness and heaviness of the human experience. In WHITE DEW LAUNDRY (Mythic Picnic Horror Anthology; May 07, 2025), I delve into the strange and horrific within the quiet rituals of life.
Next, in “Before the Barbarism“, I explore the precariousness of the human condition. The flash story is set among field-hockey-playing, impoverished, teenaged girls in southern Odisha, India. It was a pleasant surprise to note that such a story enthralled student-editors in the US, who are perhaps both unacquainted with the circumstances of these girls, and the condition of sports in India in general. The piece was included in annual print edition of 2025 GRUB STREET LITERARY MAGAZINE (VOL. 74) of which I received two copies mailed all the way to my address. I was invited to the in-person launch of the annual magazine at a glittering event held at Towson University–which I thought, was an exceptionally warm gesture.
How to Lift Your Bottom in Milk Candy Review (May 08, 2025) was again a venue from where I had received encouraging declines many times over but never been published in. This piece is accompanied by a brief interview where I talked about its inspiration. The story injects humor and absurdity into the daily life of a couple from the working-class strata, using a playful and unexpected metaphor to explore the act of resilience. It also juxtaposes lightheartedness with deeper reflections on perseverance and intimacy.
Lastly, On Witnessing (May 9; trampset) was written during Operation Sindoor. “There is our present, our today, in which there is so little of everything. Scarcity stares at opulence. We have stopped caring to regather; we’ve quit asking. There is a camouflage of consent, and a smokescreen of choice, and then we wonder — what more will be gone in the event of another murderhood?” Personal and reflective, the column draws on the subtle details that make up the fabric of human experience, showing how even the smallest moments can hold vast significance when we choose to truly see them.
May was about exploring divergent themes–from seemingly unsurmountable difficulties in life, to resilience, and from humor, to contemplation. I wanted to capture the delicate, unexpected moment at the crux of a big change, and the often contradictory nature of the human condition. Each work offers a lens through which I question how we see, experience, and interpret the world, acknowledging both the beauty and the darkness that coexist within our daily lives.
Among the highlights was also the launching of my monthly newsletter A Newsletter With a View of One’s Own, merging my monthly craft essays (which were published regularly over the last four years) with personal reflection, and practical resources for writers, including news from the lit world, submission opportunities, tips and recommended pieces, and conversations (including guest posts) about form and inspiration. These, I hope, fill the void that exists for urgent conversations, community building among marginalized writers, and a shared space that discusses topics as mundane as shifts of weather, mood, and creative energy, to something as big as closure of magazines and global controversies.
June 2025
June’s writings offer a deep dive into existential questioning, with speculative fiction and an interview. In CONSDERING HERMINA (House of Arcanum; June 01, 2025), I take a speculative leap to examine the world through another’s perspective, also using dual language and world-building. For Vestal Review, where I serve as Contributing Editor, I donned the interviewer’s hat, and conducted an interview with flash writer Avitus B Carle. “Paradox of Equilibrium: How Angst and Hopelessness Power My Writing”, my June column for trampset, reflects on how anguish and hope intersect in the creative process: “I did not expect us to be in a long dark tunnel of anxiety so enormous that we traverse through it without knowing whither its light, whither its end. I did not foresee such a disavowal of human tragedy no matter where we stand. And surely, we pretend everything is normal and go about our daily lives, without revealing ourselves.” Also, Tint Journal published an interview about my novella-in-flash ” Glass/Fire”.
In June, I also moderated a session “From there to here: writing across geographies” as part of New Zealand’s National Flash Fiction Day–Festival of Flash, in which writers from the US, to Japan, to New Zealand joined. And, of course, how could I forget Wigleaf List of Very Small Fictions 2025 where this happened: “Passion and Wild Card” in TOP 50 & 3 stories in Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist this year!
July 2025
In July, I experimented with hybridity, pushing the boundaries of form and genre. “Sixteen Steps to Reach a Point of Singularity “(Does It Have Pockets; July 01, 2025) intertwines creative nonfiction with elements of abstract fiction to explore personal transformation. Since behind-the-scenes of literary magazines is such an well-kept secret, my article “WHAT HAPPENS AT AN EDITORIAL MEETING” (LitMagNews; July 10, 2025) received a warm response, and its subject-matter breaking-down the mechanics of how final decisions are taken in an editorial meeting, started a conversation among writers. “LILAC WOMEN” (Mythic Picnic anthology edited by Tara Campbell; July 30, 2025) encapsulates moments of beauty and strangeness in (what readers repeatedly labelled as) brief, evocative prose. Here, I hoped to generate fluidity in both subject and structure, creating works that resist easy categorization.
August 2025
August was particularly challenging as I struggled with multiple issues (both writing and life/sickness). A link to a tweet referred to in my newsletter caused an unexpected & rather disproportionate reaction (an open threat from a powerful group and more!). I pulled the newsletter down not because I was scared but because I do not have the will, time or energy to fight something that is already out there in pubic. It’s okay, and taught me something. Also, that I’ve never been part of any group (geographical, or otherwise), helped. I don’t really clamour to be heard, or seek (what people proudly call) “connections”. I think I’ve done well for myself without any of those. That brings a focus back on resilience. I keep on doing what I love–that is experimenting and challenging myself with my writing. In August, I published work big on texture and brevity, particularly in the realm of poetic narrative. Tiny Molecules published “MY IMPENITENT EVENING” (August 06, 2025) which explores the poignancy of fleeting moments, and is built at the intersection of memories that never fade. Through American Brand Shop at Connaught Place and Hey, Sister in Columbia… (Another Chicago Magazine; August 21, 2025), I experiment with prose poetry to capture the nuances of place, identity, and fleeting human connections in an ever-changing world. With “LITERARY SACRILAGE—THE ADVICE AGAINST READING“ (trampset; August 02, 2025), I question the value and limits of literary advice. I’m glad this column is still being read and discussed.
Against odds, emerging writers continued to trust me with analysis and feedback under the Manuscript Consultation Program, and this month was no exception. I believe it is one of the ways I give back to the community, often waiving off my fees. The letters of gratitude afterwards are something I deeply treasure.
September 2025
September marked a return to sharp, concise narrative. In works like “Degrees of Relevance at Three” (Worcester Review; Vol. 45) which appears in print, I distilled complex emotional landscapes into sharp, vivid flashes of clarity, and used a fractured prose format. This piece merges the Mahabharata with Deccan heartland and modern society’s addiction to screens. trampset column “Vocab Glow‑Up: English’s Newest Words Buzzing in my Bonnet” takes on the crossword format to explore Gen Z’s new words and expressions. My September publications held a crispness and immediacy, where form and thought happened to converge, and embodied, again, a chance to showcase my writing in different categories. Also in September, I withdrew an accepted piece from a paying publication. The piece had been accepted in June, and at that time, I had withdrawn the story from a number of venues, as ethics demand. It had been undergoing edits, pending which, a contract would be signed. Eventually they wanted me to do a complete rewrite which I thought wasn’t feasible. We parted amicably. Glad to report the piece has since found a new home and is looking at publication in 2026, fingers crossed.
october 2025
Earlier in the Summer, I served as Guest Editor for Fiction for Ilanot Review’s themed issue titled “Flaw and Favor”. This issue was published in October. As part of a collaborative editorial team including guest editors for poetry and creative nonfiction, I was responsible for curating and shaping the fiction content of the issue, selecting pieces that responded to the nuanced theme of “Flaw and Favor” with depth, originality, and creative insight. I had a fantastic time reading, and responding with comments. In the final round of selections, working closely with the permanent editors, some of whom are associated with Bar-Ilan University, I had an opportunity not only to select the fiction and accompanying art, but experience the editorial process closely. On October 12, AKPATA MAGAZINE (UNIVERSITY OF BENIN) published my essay titled “Notes on the Pleasures and Perils of Measuring—And How I Renewed my Measures”. This is my first publication in the continent of Africa, discounting an appearance in Alexandria Book Festival for a piece in an international anthology, some years ago. The absolute highlight of the month was double Best of the Net nominations from Sunlight Press and L’ Espirit Review–both for flash fiction pieces.
november 2025
My first November publication was in Centaur Literary titled “I can’t tell if I’m in lov with the travl vlogger” on November 03, 2025–a thoroughly experimental piece that was swiftly accepted. Next was “Snowboarding” in Issue 18 of the Canadian print publication Funicular Magazine. I took to social media to express my shock when I learnt that the publication had received as many as 4000 submissions for this issue, and only about 17 pieces were selected. “A Writer’s Guide on Rage, Reflection, and Retribution” appeared in trampset columns on November 12, 2025, and insightfully honors how writers can transform anger, introspection, and the pursuit of justice into meaningful, resonant work. Again the column was warmly received and sparked conversations.
december 2025
In December, Zoetic Press Heathentide Orphans published “500 Years Between Latitudes of Love”. I’m proud of this piece that lies between fiction & nonfiction, between historical and contemporary, between violence and peace, between grace and fortitude, and straddles multiple continents from Sao Paulo to Sri Lanka.
Also in December, I am reading for FiveMinuteLit.
Finally, the year rounded off nicely with an Instagram post that went viral. It’s my first writing piece to do so, surpassing 20K views and saved 152 times. Published by Usawa Literary Review, I believe this article is both timely and concerning for writers. Check it out here.
Thank you for reading and supporting me all the way. In 2026, I hope you continue to share your creativity with the world, be generous, positive and kind. Here’s wishing you a wonderful new year!!
Leave a comment