Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. She completed her MFA in Writing (Fiction) from the University of San Francisco where she was awarded the Jan Zivic Fellowship and is currently pursuing her PhD in English with a Creative Dissertation from the University of Georgia, Athens. Her writing has appeared in december, Glassworks, West Trade Review, The Citron Review, Indian Literature, Ooligan Press, Dukool Magazine, Cerebration, Feminism in India, Times of India (Spellbound edition), and others. She is currently working on her first novel.
In her day job, she is a freelancer writing content for various websites, including reported news stories and interviews for official pages of the University of San Francisco and Samuel Merritt University, as well as articles for Epifania Magazine. She was the Editor-in-Chief of Switchback, the literary journal of USF's MFA program. She has been a journalist and copy editor for Hindustan Times in India, where she wrote feature articles on heritage and travel.
She has taught college-level creative writing and composition at the University of San Francisco and the University of Georgia. She has also been the inaugural Arts Lab Fellow at UGA, and has held writing workshops with middle-school students and seniors. When she is not reading, writing or teaching, she loves exploring historical ruins, walking among trees, and cooking eclectic dishes.