Meet the ‘Punk Dalit Girl’ Who Is India’s First Hugo Nominee

Mimi Mondal, who describes herself as ‘punk Dalit girl’ on Twitter, is India’s first nominee for the prestigious Hugo Awards — given annually for the best literary works of science fiction

or fantasy — in the Best Related Works category.

Mondal is a New York-based writer of speculative fiction and social justice non-fiction. She is also the poetry and reprint editor of Uncanny Magazine, a science fiction and fantasy magazine

which has been nominated twice for the Hugo Awards.

This year, Mondal has been nominated for her co-edited work Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E Butler.

Mondal grew up in Kolkata, trained as an editor, and studied in Scotland and New York. In 2015, she received the Octavia E Butler Memorial Scholarship that enables writers of colour to

attend one of the Clarion writing workshops, where Butler herself got her start in writing.

As a Dalit woman science fiction writer, Mimi has been pegged to an array of stereotypes.

Mimi’s ‘punk Dalit girl’ persona is a lighthearted but emphatic take on stereotypes in science fiction.

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