Bringing to you tales from the misty hills of Manipur, Djinn stories from Assam, experimental writing from Sri Lanka, and memories from a kitchen in Nepal, 4 LGBTQIA+ South Asian writers share with us glimpses of their new work as part of an anthology of Queer South Asian Writing to be published by Penguin Random House India in June 2025

These works were created as part of The Queer Writers' Room - a writing exchange programme by The Queer Muslim Project in partnership with the International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa and supported by the U.S. Consulate General Mumbai. In its second year, the programme explored how LGBTQIA+ people in South Asia integrate faith, spirituality, culture and tradition into their experiences, with the larger goal to re-frame queer narratives in popular media.