Dr. Sonali Pattnaik

Dr. Sonali Pattnaik has a PhD in English Literature and is a multiple-award winning feminist poet, academic, professor of English and visual artist. She is the author of when the flowers begin to speak (Writers Workshop, 2021) for which she was awarded, the inaugural WE Illumination Award, 2023 and International Excellence Award and the book was featured in the prestigious Journal of Commonwealth Literature. She is the recipient of Panorama International Youth Literature Award, 2024, winner of the Orange Flower Award for Poetry in English, 2022 and winner of the Gifted Poet Award, 2023. Her poetry and art have appeared in several international and national print anthologies including The Yearbook of Indian Poetry 2022, Of Dry Tongues and Brave Hearts (New Delhi), The Kali Project (USA) and Madness: An Anthology of World Poetry (Nepal) and several reputed print and online journals such as The Hong Kong Review, The Book Review India, Setu, Femasia, Cafe Dissensus (New York), Dissident Voice, Muse India, The Bombay Review and so on. She is a well-published academic with book chapters and her paper on the film Omkara is recommended reading for the MA English syllabus in Mahatma Gandhi University

Previously a UGC Junior Research Fellow, she is an alumna and former Lecturer in English (Permanent) at Delhi University and has taught Literature at several prestigious universities across the country, including, Miranda House College, SGBTKhalsa College (DU), Jai Hind College, SNDT (Mumbai) and St. Xavier's College, Autonomous, Ahmedabad where she serves as External Expert in the Board of Studies in English currently. Her book based on research on body politics in Bollywood cinema awaits publication from Orient Black Swan. She has been an advocate for a gender-just society for many years now and continues to do so through her art, poetry and activis

She has been an invited speaker at several international and national seminars as an academic and several Literature Festivals as an author, including Mysuru Literature Festival, Asia Pacific Literature Festival, 2023, Ahmedabad International Literature Festival 2023 and Toshali Literature Festival 2024. She has been shortlisted for The Orange Flower Award for writing with Social Impact 2022 and the Wordweavers Poetry Award, 2021.