About me
Moni Basu is the director of the low-residency MFA in Narrative Nonfiction and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault writer in residence at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Previously, she was the Michael and Linda Connelly Lecturer in Narrative Nonfiction at the University of Florida, where, in 2020, she was named the Teacher of the Year.
Basu, an award-winning reporter and editor, has worked at various media outlets, among them CNN and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She has reported exhaustively from South Asia and the Middle East. Her 2012 e-book, Chaplain Turner’s War grew from a Pulitzer-nominated series of stories on an Army chaplain in Iraq. A platoon sergeant named her “Evil Reporter Chick” and she was featured once as a war reporter in a Marvel comics series. She still writes as a freelancer and her recent work has been published in magazines including The Bitter Southerner and Flamingo.
Born in Kolkata, India, Basu grew up straddling two cultures and often feeling “othered.” As such, her work has explored immigration, race and identity.
Basu has served as an editor for The Ground Truth Project and the Bitter Southerner and has taught at the Poynter Institute. She serves on the national advisory board of the Asian American Journalists Association.