Sonali Prasad

Indian writer and artist Sonali Prasad's current compositions examine social, scientific, and environmental conditions through artistic mediums and related language use. What soundings and textures are easily recognized, how those can be given new properties, and what routes can be set anew. She experiments with form and has used traditional and creative media practices, including longform reporting, poetry, data, documentary, installations, and visual art.

Her journalism work has been published in The Guardian, The Washington Post, Hakai Magazine, Mongabay, Quartz, and Esquire Singapore.

Her debut novel GLASS BOTTOM is out with Picador India (2024). The publisher has called it their ‘literary debut of the year’.

She was awarded the Logan Science Journalism Fellowship at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, for May 2022 and the Jan Michalski Writing Residency in Montricher, Switzerland, for July-August 2022.

Lectures, panels, and workshops: TED Women, MIT Open Ocean Lab, Harvard Climate Leadership Program, Wellesley College (Massachusetts), India Culture Lab, TEDxGateway, and various International Olympic Committee conferences.

Top Fellowships:

• Global 2021 TED Fellow

• Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2019-20

• Investigative Fellow at the Energy and Environment Reporting Project at Columbia Graduate School Of Journalism- September 2016- May 2017

• Falling Walls Science Fellow for a conference in Berlin, Germany - 2017

• Pulitzer Traveling Fellow - 2016

• One of eight Google News Lab Fellows in the US - June 2016        

Selected Published Work: 

• ‘Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise’, Nieman Lab Predictions for 2021.

• ‘The Empty Houses That Foreign Aid Built’ (a piece on the long-term impacts of disaster recovery efforts on the fifteenth anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami), Hakai Magazine, 3 December 2019.

• ‘On Land and At Sea, Indian Fishermen Fight For Their Future’ (documentary and written piece on coastal zone regulations under a pro-industry government), The World Post, 2 October 2019.

• ‘15 years after the tsunami, Aceh reckons with an inconsistent fisheries recovery’, Mongabay, 23 September 2019.

• ‘Indian tribe revives heirloom seeds for health and climate security’ (a piece on the rituals of the Dongria Kondh), Mongabay, 30 November 2018

• ‘An ingenious way to combat India’s suffocating pollution’ (a piece on how cultivating mushrooms using crop residue can help reduce air pollution), The Washington Post, 1 August 2018

• ‘Power Rangers’ (a piece on the ‘Ranger Ranger’ series, a year-and-a-half-long reporting project on forest frontline staff across India’s national parks), Harper’s Bazaar India, July-August 2018 issue.

• ‘Japan is growing an island’ (data visualization of global sea-level rise and investigative piece. Part of a year-long international collaboration), CORRECTIV, 28 July 2017.

• ‘Refuge for the Ridgway’s Rail'' (a piece on the endangered bird’s survival against sea-level rise), Hakai Magazine, 2 June 2017.

• ‘Obama’s dirty secret: the fossil fuel projects the US littered around the world’ (day two coverage of the investigative series), The Guardian, 1 December 2016.

• ‘How Obama’s climate change legacy is weakened by US investment in dirty fuel’ (contributed to the opening piece of the investigative series. It was a year-long project), The Guardian, 30 November 2016.

• ‘The ambitious plan to make India the new centre of the experimental physics world’ (a piece on India’s proposal to set up a LIGO observatory), Quartz, 5 September 2016.

• ‘The Burnt Phoenix’ (a piece on India’s acid attack survivors), Esquire Singapore, May 2016 Issue.

• ‘Leaping Forward’ (a piece on the fight for gender equality in sport), Olympic Review, number 93, December 2014 issue.

Exhibitions: 

• Fruits of Discord, Sackler Building, Harvard University, USA - December 2019

• Blood Falls, Antarctica, Sackler Building, Harvard University, USA - December 2019

• Ranger Ranger, Jor Bagh metro station—one of New Delhi’s busy public terminals— and at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, India - 2018.

Other Awards/Appointments: 

• Earth Journalism Grant for reporting on the revival of heirloom seeds by the Dongria Kondh, one of India's most vulnerable indigenous groups - 2018.

• Interviewed former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the history of peace talks between North and South Korea at the Olympism in Action forum - October 2018.

• US$150,000 Magic Grant awarded by the Brown Institute of Media Innovation for a project analysing coral reef health data from underwater images using machine learning - August 2016-2017. We were a team of six engineers and storytellers, and the year-long project was international in scope.

• Awarded an 'Honorable Mention' in the Outstanding Explanatory Reporting category at the Society of Environmental Journalists Annual Awards for the team’s investigation on foreign fossil fuel investments made under the Obama administration - October 2017.

• Covered the London 2012 Olympic Games, the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games and the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Paralympics. Was a mentor at the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games for the International Olympic Committee Young Reporters Programme. 

• Youngest member to be appointed to the International Olympic Committee Press Committee – 2012-2021

• Listed in the ‘Around The Rings Golden 25 Women’ for 2012-13 as one of the most influential women having an impact in the Olympic world.

Education: 

• Master of Science in Journalism from Columbia Graduate School Of Journalism, New York, USA. Graduated with Honors. Dates: 5 August 2015 to 15 May 2016.

• Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science with a Minor in Entrepreneurship from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dates: 30 July 2008 to 30 June 2012.