Our Story
The Hooghly Review is a digital free-access magazine of literature, culture, and arts that aims to publish creatives at all stages of their careers. Named and conceptualised by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury in July 2022, she invited fellow writer-poet and friend, Ankit Raj Ojha, on board in October 2022 before opening submissions for the first time in December 2022. The two have since been editing the magazine, expanding and developing it, and building its foundations to serve the literary community in the years to come.
The Hooghly Review is a project fuelled by shared passion and a love for all things creative. In the past, we’ve called ourselves “non-profit,” and while it helped easily clarify that we are not here to make profit, seeing as we are not technically an organisation, we’ve decided to stop using the term. Costs of running the magazine are borne by the editors. We neither charge submission fees nor do we offer paid services such as expedited responses, feedback, etc. We also do not run ads or accept donations, nationally or internationally. In the future, however, there may be contests or specific submission calls with interested person(s), who are fellow writers and artists, sponsoring prize money and/or honorariums, and making direct payments to winners/writers.
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 Presence
We have readers as far as word of mouth and the internet go. And currently, have contributions spanning every continent (including Antarctica, where one of our contributors worked for a while).
Here are the 63 countries our contributions are from: Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe in Africa; Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Qatar, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, The Philippines, Turkey, UAE and Vietnam in Asia; Armenia, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Montenegro, Scotland, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Wales in Europe; Canada, Mexico and USA in North America; Australia and New Zealand in Oceania; Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela in South America.
Our Team
Tejaswinee Roychowdhury, Founding Editor
Ankit Raj Ojha, Founding Editor
Learn more about our founding editors here.
François Bereaud, Guest Editor for Murals (December 2024)
Sanjeev Sethi, Guest Editor for Poetry Special (November 2025)
Learn more about our guest editors here.
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 . . ., with Suchita Senthil Kumar, EIC of Zhagaram Literary, and with Namrata, host of the Bookbot Theory podcast, available on YouTube, Spotify and Amazon Music.
We nominate our contributors for awards such as the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best Spiritual Literature, and are read for the Wigleaf Top 50.
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.
