Pia Sawhney
Writer/Founder
Before becoming a writer, Pia was an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist. Until recently, she was an accomplished founder, part of the tech industry.
Her work bends and stretches ideas of community, cultural inheritance and transnational identity.
FILM AND PORTFOLIO LINKS
→ Pia graduated from the MFA Nonfiction program at Columbia University in May 2025 and completed her first writing residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in September 2026. Her latest book project explores migration, marginalization and the process of becoming. "Disquiet" is its title.
In the past, her film projects were featured in the New York Times, Variety, the Washington Post and The Huffington Post; they screened at the Rotterdam and Edinburgh film festivals.
Pia has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and is the recipient of awards, such as the Amnesty International DOEN Award for Human Rights. She was twice selected as a finalist for Outstanding Story, an award offered by the South Asian Journalists Association each year. She won that award once.
Pia is also Founder of the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation, an initiative to remedy the stark disparities in literary translation worldwide. Since the award was launched in 2022, it has heralded storytellers from the Indian Subcontinent and elevated them within the broader literary ecosystem.