Shriya Bhagwat
Writer, Producer, Director
Shriya Bhagwat is a New Zealand interdisciplinary writer of Indian origin based in Scotland. Working across theatre, fiction, film and poetry, her work explores the extraordinary within ordinary lives.
A long-time collaborator with Prayas Theatre, New Zealand’s leading South Asian theatre company, she has contributed as both a writer and performer. She wrote for the company’s First World Problems development seasons and appeared as Parvati in Swabhoomi: Borrowed Earth, portraying a newly arrived migrant whose hopes of a new life are shattered when the husband she has travelled to meet never arrives. She has also reviewed major Prayas productions, including Love ‘n’ Stuff and Dhaba on Devon Avenue.
In 2022, Shriya was awarded the prestigious Michael King Writers Residency, where she developed her second short story collection, An Interrogation of Choices. The manuscript had previously been selected for the New Zealand Society of Authors’ CompleteMS programme and was long-listed for the 2024 Michael Gifkins Prize.
She also received the AUT Research Masters Scholarship in Creative Writing. In 2023, she adapted one of her short stories into the short film Mr. Singh’s Death, which screened at the 14th Annual Chicago South Asian Film Festival. Her stage play The Kamasutra Chronicles premiered to sold-out audiences and positive reviews at Auckland’s Basement Theatre.
Her poetry has appeared in Blackmail Press, while her fiction has been published in Between You and Me: Culture in Context (Rouge Publishing), Coldnoon Literary Journal, Branch and Root: The Anthology of Trees (Shooting Star Press, Australia), Ko Aotearoa Tātou / We Are New Zealand (Otago University Press), and A Clear Dawn: New Asian NZ Writing (Auckland University Press). She has also written commentary for the Asia Media Centre.
Since relocating to Scotland in 2024, Shriya’s work has increasingly engaged with the intersection of interdisciplinary arts, community practice and mental health, exploring the role of creativity in social prescribing and wellbeing.
She continues to write across multiple forms while developing new collaborations in the UK. Inspired by Henri Matisse’s Notes of a Painter (1908), she believes art should never be limited by convention and that one of its highest callings is simply to bring joy.