Sangamithra Iyer is the author of GOVERNING BODIES: A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed (Milkweed Editions Fall 2025), a lyrical reckoning of the ways bodies—human, animal, water— are controlled and liberated. She is a writer and a licensed professional civil engineer who holds a B.E. in Civil Engineering from the Cooper Union , an M.S. in Geotechnical Engineering from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, where she was a recipient of a Hertog Fellowship.She is the recipient of a Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship at the NYPL,a Cafe Royal Foundation Literature Grant and a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant.
Sangu served as the Assistant Editor of Satya magazine and is the editor of The Long View, a special anniversary edition of Satya. She considers herself to be a plant eating primate who has been humbled to be in the presence of great apes. She has volunteered at primate rescue and rehabilitation sanctuaries in the U.S. and in Africa. Sangu served as an Associate for the environmental action tank Brighter Green, focused on sustainability, equity and rights. She is the recipient of scholarships to workshops in New Journalism, Historical Narrative, and Voice at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, MA and a Literature Travel/Study Grant from The Jerome Foundation. She was a finalist for the 2016 Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature. She was awarded a residency from the Camargo Foundation with support from Jerome Foundation and Art Matters.She was awarded a Pushcart Prize and an Emerging Writer Fellowship to Aspen Summer Words 2018
As an engineer and planner she is interested in issues related to nature based stormwater management, water supply infrastructure planning, watershed protection, waste management, seismic stability, climate change, affordability, animal protection, wildlife coexistence and sustainable cities.
Her writing explores issues related to animals, social and environmental justice and the intersection of the personal and planetary grief. She received a Culture and Animals Foundation Grant for THE LITERARY ANIMAL PROJECT.
Check out some selected works here.
Contact: sangu.iyer[at]gmail[dot]com
Represented by: Anjali Singh at Anjali Singh Literary
Publicist: Morgan Larocca
Praise for Governing Bodies:
“[An] evocative and whip-smart memoir . . . Governing Bodies provides a crucial voice in a time of increasing peril.”—Booklist, starred review
“Sangamithra Iyer writes with the kind of intelligence and attention that makes you lean in, asking how we might live in this aching world with more care, more kinship, and more courage. Governing Bodies beautifully guides us with the lyrical grace of someone who knows the liberation and legacy of what magic can happen when you combine the language of water and the weight of memory.”—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders.
“A civil engineer makes a connection with her grandfather and father over the shared work they did in watershed protection and water infrastructure projects, braiding with the history of her family stories of animals and natural landscapes from around the world. From Burma to Cameroon, from India to New York, Sangamithra Iyer builds from autobiographical fragments a beautiful song of connection, which includes all living things, not only her family, but the animals and rivers she writes about, and ultimately all of us as well, the readers, held in communion. It’s a remarkable book that blends the modes of memoir, journalism, essay, and cultural commentary with the lyrical sweep and rhythm of poetry to paint a vivid picture of both the natural world and the life of a family.”—Kazim Ali, author of Northern Light
“Governing Bodies encourages us to love generously and attentively all that thrives in the world—primates and hens, rivers and soil—and to heed the continuity between human and planetary bodies. A radiant book of reflections that will stay with me.”—Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
“Through memory, research, imagination, and profound love for the human and more than human world, Sangamithra Iyer has not so much written a book as created a utopia inside its pages. Governing Bodies is the work of a mind as agile as water, with many surprising streams feeding into the shining whole. This book does what the best books do: It helps me live.”—Shruti Swamy, author of The Archer
“This project brims with loveliness; Iyer writes about family and ecology and the legacy of colonialism with enduring insight and gentle, heartbreaking passion. She delivers a subtle, meditative exploration on grief and nonviolence, an international and intergenerational voyage through shared histories and a consideration of what we owe to each other and the natural world.”—Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant jury