Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and International Booker Prize winning literary translator working in Kannada and English.
Deepa is the first Indian translator and the first translator of colour to be awarded the International Booker Prize.
Her cultural criticism, essays, columns and journalism have been published extensively in Indian and international publications, anthologies and art book projects. She is the author of a children’s book ‘Champi and the Fig Tree’ in Kannada and English.
Her published translations from Kannada include works by Kota Shivarama Karanth, Kodagina Gouramma and Banu Mushtaq. She is a finalist for the 2026 Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize category of the National Critics Circle Awards and is also the recipient of an EnglishPEN Award for the translation of Mushtaq’s collection of short stories titled ‘Heart Lamp: Selected Stories’. The stories were selected and curated by Bhasthi.
Deepa lives and works in Kodagu in southern India.
