Our Story
The Hooghly Review is a digital non-profit and free-access magazine of literature, culture & arts with the aim to publish creatives in all stages of their career. Named and conceptualised by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury in July 2022, she invited fellow writer-poet and friend, Ankit Raj Ojha, onboard in October 2022. The two have since been editing the magazine, expanding and developing it, and building its foundations to humbly serve the literary community in the years to come.
Our Mission
Our focus is on individuals and their lived experiences rather than on social/political/religious/cultural communities at large because we understand and recognise how truly alone and cornered one can feel when shunned by their community—those they thought they belonged with, for the ‘crime’ of going against the accepted norms and/or stepping outside the group-think. Additionally, we believe in the inherent goodness of all human beings despite their many imperfections because it is easy to be lost in this insanely difficult world; we believe in reformation and rehabilitation rather than in shaming and retribution, and thus, we believe in second chances. As such, this is a space for creative expression by all individuals including rebels, free-thinkers, outcasts, and fallen angels.
We want diverse voices and pride ourselves on not practising censorship either on the creative works we publish or of artists while at the same time not allowing and/or enabling hate speech and/or bigoted arguments backed by historical and/or factual inaccuracies.
Balance, truth, empathy, and flow are the key aesthetics of our magazine.
Our Team
Tejaswinee Roychowdhury, Editor
Ankit Raj Ojha, Editor
Learn more about our editors here.
François Bereaud, Guest Editor for Murals (Winter 2024)
Our Editorial Style & Standards
Pull back the curtain for a peek at the internal mechanism of The Hooghly Review from our interviews with Jim Harrington on his blog Six Questions For . . . and with Suchita Senthil Kumar, EIC of Zhagaram Literary.
We nominate our contributors for awards such as the Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, Best Spiritual Literature, etc.
Our Publishing Ethics
We have a strict policy against plagiarism and work deliberately intended to offend any person or group. Upon receiving such submissions, we reserve the right to ban you permanently from submitting to our magazine.
We’re sure AI is helpful in many ways but this space is about original creativity and so we won’t publish AI-generated work.
Our readers are (hopefully) mature adults. Eroticism/sensuality in literature and art is wonderful, but we will reject pornographic work.
Hit us with experimental themes, and difficult subject matters. As such, your work may be political but we don’t want to be preached at.
While we love work that brings forth your culture, we don’t want religious work intended to proselytize.
CNF, photography, travelogues, travel writing, reviews, culture essays & photo essays are to be submitted with the following understanding: you are solely responsible for the accuracy of the information(s) in your piece; in the event we receive formal or informal complaint(s) that your piece is inaccurate or misrepresents any person, place, culture, other things, we will notify you, and if the issue cannot be resolved immediately, we will take it down without owning any responsibility (we will not disclose the complainant unless we are legally required to). The editorial decision will be final.
