Keya Mitra is a Pushcart-Prize-winning writer of novels, essays, and short stories.
Her work has won 10 major recognitions since 2024.
2026 Pushcart Prize Winner
Keya’s essay, Almost Born, will be included in the 2026 anthology of Pushcart Prize winners. The essay was nominated by The Missouri Review after winning the magazine’s 2024 Perkoff Prize.
WINNER: 2024 Summer Nonfiction Contest
WINNER: 2024 Perkoff Prize in Creative Nonfiction
FINALIST: 2024 Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction
FINALIST: 2024-25 Short Fiction Award
FINALIST: 2024 Short Fiction Contest
FINALIST: 2024 Raz-Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction
FINALIST: 2024 Fall Story Contest
FINALIST: 2024 Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction
FINALIST: 2025 Susan Atefat Prize for Creative Nonfiction
“Sharp… exquisite… beautiful… brilliantly moving…
when I finished, I immediately returned to the beginning to read it again. I came away wanting to stay with this writer, in this world…”
— Safiya Sinclair, award-winning author of How to Say Babylon: A Memoir, in praise of “Bruised and Glorious,” winner of the 2024 Prairie Schooner Summer Essay Contest.
Current Projects
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Immigrant Delay Disease
A novel
A literary thriller set in the rainforests of Meghalaya, India
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Based on the short story that won the Bellingham Review 2021 Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. And featuring an excerpt shortlisted in the Masters Review Anthology XIII.
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Almost Born
A memoir in chapters
A “brilliantly moving” exploration of fertility struggles, chronic illness, and the physical and emotional challenges of hiking multiple Camino Santiago pilgrimages
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Featuring chapters that won the Prairie Schooner 2024 summer nonfiction contest, The Missouri Review 2024 Perkoff Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and the Pushcart Prize — and were recognized by Narrative Magazine, New Letters, and Prairie Schooner (again).
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Bad Babies
A short story collection
A moving, and often darkly funny collection centered on pregnancy and infants.
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Recognized for the Iowa Short Fiction Award (2024-2025 Finalist), AWP Grace Paley Prize (2024 Finalist), Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize (2024 Finalist), and the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest (2024 Finalist).
Previous versions of the collection were also shortlisted for the Bakeless Prize, the Flannery O’Connor Award, Dzanc Books’ Diverse Voices Prize, and the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. And it was longlisted for the Iowa Short Fiction Award.
“Sad and sweet, powerful and disturbing, light as a feather in its deftness, and deeply moving in its human wisdom. What a wonderful discovery.”
— David Lynn, Former Editor-in-Chief of The Kenyon Review