Hi there. I’m Sonia Faleiro. I’m a nonfiction writer and the founder of the global literary mentorship program, South Asia Speaks.

My new book, The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism is Shaping Modern Asia (Columbia Global Reports, 2025), was named to The New York Times’ Essential Reading List on Buddhism in Asia. You can read an excerpt in The Guardian here. Thant Myint-U writes, “With sharp insight and deep humanity, Sonia Faleiro’s The Robe and the Sword traces the long and uneasy bond between Buddhism and political power, offering a vital portrait of how faith, identity, and resistance are redefined across the region.” 

Earlier books include The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing (Bloomsbury/Grove Atlantic, 2021), a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a Sunday Times Book of the Year, and a Human Rights Watch Book Club pick. It was nominated for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction, and the Premio Inge Feltrinelli, and has been translated into French, Italian, and Polish. 

I also wrote Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars(2011), which was nominated for the Lettre Ulysses Award and named a Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year. It was recognised by The Guardian, The Economist, NPR, and Time Out as a Best Book of the Year and translated into Swedish, Dutch, and French. 

I edited How I Write (HarperCollins, 2024), a collection of conversations with leading South Asian writers, including Pankaj Mishra, Mira Nair, Kamila Shamsie, and Jamil Jan Kochai. And I co-edited a collection of testimonies on the Gaza genocide (Verso, October 2025).

Highlights of my journalism include reporting on the war in Kashmir for Harper’s, exploring fact-checking in Modi’s India for Rest of World, and profiling India’s wrestling star for 1843.

In 2020, I founded South Asia Speaks, to support emerging writers who identify as South Asian through a free, year-long mentorship program. My goal is to address publishing inequalities, amplify underrepresented voices, and expand access to literary networks and resources for South Asian writers worldwide.The program has supported more than 110 Fellows who have published books, signed with agencies such as CAA and The Wylie Agency, and earned fully funded places at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Creative Writing Program at NYU, and The New India Foundation.

I’m the co-founder of Deca, a global collective of long-form journalists, and the founder of Artists for India, which raised $30,000 during the COVID-19 crisis for Mission Oxygen. In 2024, I helped build #BooksforGaza, raising $85,000 for the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund, which provides aid to injured children.

I’ve taught at several universities, including Royal Holloway and Goldsmiths (University of London), and designed writing workshops for Ashoka University, the National Centre for Writing, Undertow Story School, and, of course, South Asia Speaks. 

I'm represented by Janklow & Nesbit and United Talent Agency.