About me
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
- Maya Angelou


The story of
Gayatri
Gayatri Majumdar is editor, publisher and founder of critically acclaimed Indian literary journal, The Brown Critique (1995–2015). The journal published hundreds of established and emerging poets from India and other countries. Gayatri began her career as a journalist in Press Trust of India and The Independent in Mumbai. She later worked as assistant editor of Indian PEN (then edited by Nissim Ezekiel). Her career also encompasses leadership in the publishing industry and work in NGOs
Gayatri’s published and upcoming books include A Song for Bela (a novel, 2017), poetry collections Shout (2000), I Know You Are Here (Red River, 2019) and The Dream Pod (Copper Coin, 2021) and non-fiction
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The Lotus of the Heart (2021). Besides, her poems and prose have been published in major journals and anthologies and appeared in A Hudson View, “Poetry International Web’, Indian Literature, BigBridge, Open Space India, The Sun Collective, Chipmunk, Borderless Journal, Hibiscus: Poems That Heal and Empower, Open Your Eyes: An Anthology on Climate Change, Shimmer Spring (the last thee published by Hawakal Publishers, New Delhi) and WITNESS – Poetry of Dissent (Red River, New Delhi). Recently, the bilingual Setu journal published three of her poems in January 2021 and two non-fiction prose pieces in their June 2021 issue. Her poem ‘I am that old woman now’ appeared in The Kali Project anthology (Indie Blu (e) Publishing, USA). Some of her poems have been translated into Hindi, Nepalese and Italian. Gayatri is co-founder of ‘Pondicherry Poets’ and has been curating the annual three-day Pondicherry/Auroville Poetry Festival. Apart from hosting various other literary/music events around the country, in September 2019, she co-hosted a seven-day residential poetry/music festival ‘Wings of Spirit’ in Talla Ramgarh, Nainital, in the Himalayas. With the current pandemic making it impossible to conduct live face-to-face events, Gayatri regularly hosts poets, musicians and other artistes on The Brown Critique YouTube channel.
Storyline
- 1995
Founded by writer and editor, Gayatri Majumdar, The Brown Critique literary quarterly in Mumbai
- 2000
Brown Critique website
The Brown Critique’s special issue “Nostalgia” is published from Kolkata
Sampark (Kolkata/New Delhi) publishes Gayatri’s first book of poems Shout
- 2010
The Brown Critique is revived with a blog where new poets, writers and artists are published apart from featuring key contributors from previous issues.
Brown Critique Books publishes several volumes of poems by new and established poets
- 2015
Gayatri moves to Pondicherry
- 2017
Sun Publishing (New Delhi/New York) publishes Gayatri’s novel A Song for Bela
- 2019
Red River, New Delhi, publishes Gayatri’s second book of poems I Know You Are Here
- Today
- An amazing year in which
- Three Brown Critique books are out:
- It’s Uncomplicated by Nitya Swaruba
- Songs of the Deep by Harvinder Kaur
- The lotus of the heart by Gayatri Majumdar
- Copper Coin (new Delhi) publishes Gayatri’s third book of poems The Dream Pod
- The Brown Critique publishes its first anthology “Home”
- The lotus of the heart: Gayatri’s fifth book and first non-fiction of the ‘philosophical’ genre is published by Brown Critique Books
- Our website is re-launched
- Three Brown Critique books are out:

