Sunayana Kachroo

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Sunayana Kachroo is an Indian-American poet, film-writer, lyricist, and columnist. She was born in Jammu and Kashmir, India, into a Kashmiri Pandit family. She studied in Jammu and Kashmir and Maharashtra, earning a master’s degree in computer science from Savitribai Phule Pune University in Pune. Her father, Chaman Kachroo, was a poet known for his Urdu Nazm Charcha.

In 2000, Sunayana moved to the United States and worked as an analyst in New York City. Her first book, Waqt Se Pare – Beyond Time, was published in 2013. She has written lyrics for songs sung by many artists, including Sonu Nigam, Shankar Mahadevan, Ali Sethi, Sunidhi Chauhan, and Hariharan. She also won the Best Lyricist Award for Ae Savere.

Sunayana developed an interest in poetry at about age 15, exploring several forms. She became a featured poet at the South Asian Institute of Harvard in 2014 and later performed with Punjabi poet Nirupama Dutt at the Bangalore Literature Festival. Since 2015, she has been a featured poet at the annual South Asian Poetry reading at Harvard University.

In 2022, she released a new poetry collection, Sunny Side Up, and an NFT poem titled Home and Homeless. She was invited to recite her poems on Capitol Hill in the United States. She has performed around the world at venues such as Jose Mateo’s Ballet Theatre, Harvard University, the Indian Consulate in NYC, and Hindu Heritage Day. In 2023, she released the song Tum Kehte Ho, produced by Sunidhi Chauhan.