Saumya Roy

Saumya Roy is a journalist and activist based in Mumbai. She has written for Forbes India magazine, Mint newspaper, Outlook magazine, wsj.com, thewire.in and Bloomberg News among others. In 2010 she co- founded Vandana Foundation to support the livelihoods of Mumbai’s poorest micro entrepreneurs by giving small, low interest loans.

She has received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Blue Mountain Center, Carey Institute for Global Good and Sangam House to write this book. She attended a conference on environmental humanities at KTH, Stockholm in 2017 to share her research, and contributed a chapter to Dharavi: The Cities Within/ (HarperCollins, 2013), an anthology of essays on Asia’s largest slum.

Roy was a fellow of the National Foundation of India in 2012, and has Masters Degrees in journalism from Northwestern University and Mumbai’s Sophia College, where she teaches magazine writing.

Her first book, Mountain Tales: Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings, will be published by Profile in 2021.