Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan

Writer / Performer / Cultural Consultant

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan was born in new Delhi in 1988. Her mother, Chitra Narayanan, is a career diplomat who later became an Ambassador of India to a number of countries, and her father Prasad Chandra Mohan worked in the World Bank for many years. Chandrika moved to the US as a child for three years before spending a longer time in New Delhi. During this time, she lived with her mother’s parents, former Vice President and former President of India KR Narayanan, and Usha Narayanan. All the people who brought Chandrika up had roots in art and literature: her parents both worked in publishing, her grandfather studied literature, and her grandmother translated Burmese short stories. Chandrika’s father’s side of the family includes renowned art historian Krishna Chaitanya.

In 2001, her mother was appointed Ambassador of India to Sweden and Latvia, and so they lived in Stockholm from 2001 to 2004. There, Chandrika attended international schools with students from many other countries, and this remained the case when Chitra was made ambassador to Turkey in 2005. About thirty years previous, her grandfather had been posted to Ankara, living in the same residence. Despite only spending a few years there, Chandrika felt embedded in Turkish culture, from how it influenced her mother and grandparents from before, and while she was there herself. To this day her closest friends are Turkish and still live there. It has been harrowing for her to watch a country, and people she loves, regress and suffer under a dictatorial government that destroys so many people’s lives and human rights.

Following secondary school, Chandrika moved to the UK where she graduated with a BA in Art History and English Literature from The University of York. Subsequently, she and a group of college friends moved to London together where she attained an MA in Art History from University College London. She began working in the arts sector there, through internships in places such as Christie’s Auction House and The Victoria and Albert Museum, before working at the Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery and the Be Smart About Art Academy. Through these roles she realised she enjoyed working in the space between business development and the arts, supporting arts organisations that both supported artists while providing an impactful experience for the general public.

In 2012, Chandrika began the process of applying to do a second Masters, this one in Arts Management, but a change in immigration regulations across the UK meant that a new student visa was not eligible, and so she was forced to leave the UK at very short notice. Within a few weeks she found a similar course in Dublin, and by the September 2012 she moved to Ireland, to study Arts Management and Cultural Policy in UCD.

After graduating from UCD, she realised that she wanted to continue working in business development in the art world. She worked at Business to Arts, and was appointed fundraiser for the Irish Architecture Foundation. However she once again hit immigration-related barriers, and was forced to leave her role as, like most arts jobs, it did not meet Ireland’s restrictive work permit requirements. She was offered a role eligible for a Work Permit as Arts and Culture Manager of The Liquor Rooms, where in addition to programming cultural events in the venue she produced a talk series which was shortlisted for an IDI (Institute of Designers in Ireland) award, and co-founded the Irish Craft Cocktail Awards. After three years in the drinks industry, she was offered a role eligible for a work permit back in the arts sector, and worked in marketing and fundraising for Fishamble: The New Play Company until 2021. Over the years she participated in two RAISE fundraising training programmes run by the Arts Council, and was also part of the Business to Arts Fundraising Fellowship Dublin training programme.

During her years in Ireland, Chandrika was also building up a writing career. Upon arrival in Ireland in 2012, she applied to write for LeCool online magazine, and so was able to attend a variety of events such as Milk and Cookies, spoken word events and theatre festivals. Her introduction to Ireland, and Irish history, was largely through art. Up until October 2019, when she secured a Stamp 4 permission (meaning she could live and work freely in Ireland without work permits), it was illegal for her to do any paid work outside of her full-time job, meaning she actively could not pursue a writing career or be paid to write or perform.

In 2019, her poems were published in Dedalus Press’ Writing Home: The New Irish Poets anthology, which like a number of other migrant poets, launched her writing career. Since then she has also been published in Local Wonders from Dedalus Press, the Irish Chair of Poetry’s Hold Open the Door anthology, Banshee, Honest Ulsterman, and Poetry Ireland Review amongst others. As a queer writer, she also has had poems published in anthologies such as Queering the Green by Lifeboat Press, and Green Carnations, Glas na Gile: 25 Young LGBTQ+ Poets from Ireland. Chandrika was been selected for the Irish Writers Centre’s XBorders programme twice, she has been featured on The Moth and Mortified podcasts, with work aired on NPR and RTÉ radio, and regularly performs at literary and cabaret events in Ireland. In 2020 Chandrika won 3rd place in the Fingal Poetry Prize, and was editor of Poetry Ireland’s Trumpet issue 9.

In 2021, Chandrika was a Poetry Ireland’s Introductions participant, and a Science Gallery Dublin’s Rapid Residency Artist. Before her career in arts fundraising, her passion was to work in the space between arts and science. Since leaving her role in Fishamble and becoming a full-time freelance artist and cultural consultant in 2021, she has been awarded Arts Council Agility Grant twice, to create a multidisciplinary installation that brings together poetry and solar flare research, and to begin a collection of essays. As a big fan of writing for children and YA readers, and speculative fiction, she is also a book reviewer for Children’s Books Ireland’s Inis magazine, and now regularly interviews authors at festivals about their books, particularly poets, debut authors, and writers who blur the boundaries between magic, dystopias, and reality. She hopes to one day be one of those authors.

You can follow Chandrika on Twitter @chandrikanm and find out more through her website here.

Many thanks to Chandrika for sharing her story with us.