About Mathangi

SHORT BIO

Mathangi Subramanian is an award winning writer and educator Her novel A People's History of Heaven was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, among others. Her middle grade book Dear Mrs. Naidu won the South Asia Book Award and her picture book A Butterfly Smile is in the Nobel Museum. Her shorter work has appeared in The Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar, Ms.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Kweli Journal, and McSweeny's Internet Tendency, among others. She is a guest artist at Denver School of the Arts and a Fulbright-Nehru Senior scholar, and she holds a doctorate in communication and education from Columbia Teachers College. 

LONGER BIO (If you’re curious)

Mathangi Subramanian is an award winning writer, author, and educator. A former public school teacher, senior policy analyst for the New York City Council, and assistant vice president at Sesame Workshop, Mathangi Subramanian's work has appeared in The Washington Post.com, Ms. Magazine Digital, Al Jazeera America, Quartz, The Hindu, The Wire, The Indian Express, and the Seal Press anthology Click! When We Knew We Were Feminists, among others. For a complete list of her work, check out her publications page.

She has received various fellowships, including a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholarship, a Jacob Javits Fellowship, and an Office of Policy and Research Fellowship from Columbia Teachers College, where she completed her doctorate in communications and education in 2010. 

Her novel A People’s History of Heaven was a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Awards and the PFC - Valley of Words Awards, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was named a Skipping Stones Honor Book.

In 2016, she won the South Asia Book Award for her novel Dear Mrs. Naidu. 

In 2015, her short story Banu the Builder won the Middle Grades category of the 2015 Katherine O. Paterson Prize, and her short story Half Wild was shortlisted for the Out of Print-DNA short fiction contest. In 2016, her short story Perfectly Clear was awarded an honorable mention in the Reynolds Prize for Fiction.  

Over the past two decades, she has taught high school chemistry in a border town in Texas; digital storytelling to youth in an alternatives to incarceration program; English as a second language to working class girls in Bangalore; and creative writing to adult students at The Porch, The Writer’s Center, the Regis Mile High MFA Program, and The Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She currently teaches as a guest artist at Denver School of the Arts. In 2024, she founded Moon Rabbit Writing Studio, a workshop and coaching business that prioritizes creative joy.

As of this writing, she lives in Denver with her kid, her husband, and way too many picture books.