Rajat Chaudhuri has published six books in two languages including fiction
and translation. He selected and edited The Best Asian Speculative
Fiction (2018) collection of stories and is an editor of a forthcoming
Asia-Pacific solar-punk anthology to be co-published by RIHN, Japan and World
Weaver Press, US. Chaudhuri’s climate change novel, The Butterfly Effect (2018) is listed as one of `Fifty
Must-Read Eco-disasters in Fiction’ by Book
Riot (US) and has been widely mentioned in national media for its parallels
with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Rajat has won a number of writing fellowships and international
residency awards including British Council administered Charles Wallace
Fellowship (UK), Hawthornden Fellowship (Scotland, UK), Ministry of Culture,
Korea (ARKO)-INKO residency award (South Korea), Villa Sarkia residency award
(Finland, invited 2020) and Sangam House (India) residency.
He has done book readings, offered workshops, presented
keynotes, panel talks, presentations and other speaking assignments about
climate change, better futures, storytelling, climate change fiction (cli-fi),
environmental science fiction, pandemics health and environment among other
issues in a variety of venues including Museum of Science Fiction, Washington
D.C., US, George Washington University, US, Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, Hong Kong, Sahitya Akademi,
Delhi, National Library of India, Osmania University, Dongguk University,
Seoul, Chichester University, UK and several other places. He has published
book reviews, essays, articles for The
Telegraph, New Indian Express, Outlook, American
Book Review, Asian Review of Books, The Statesman, Anandabazar Patrika (Bengali) and elsewhere.
As an environment activist Chaudhuri has contributed to the UNDP
Human Development Report besides writing monographs and articles and he has
been a climate advocate at the United Nations, New York. He recently finished
translating an anthology of Bengali poetry and is currently putting finishing
touches to a slipstream novel on madness.