Keya Mitra is an award-winning writer and Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Pacific University.
Her essay “Almost Born,” published in The Missouri Review, won the 2024 Perkoff Prize in non-fiction and has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, with publication forthcoming in the 2026 Pushcart Prize Anthology.
Recent non-fiction recognition
Almost Born
(A memoir in chapters)
Several chapters of the memoir have earned recognition in addition to the Pushcart and Perkoff Prizes noted above.
“Bruised and Glorious” — Prairie Schooner
The chapter won the 2024 Prairie Schooner Summer Nonfiction Prize, selected by judge Safiya Sinclair and is forthcoming in the spring issue.
“Never Let You Go” — The Missouri Review
The chapter was named a finalist for the Missouri Review's Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize.
“Runts” — New Letters, Narrative Magazine, Iowa Review, Disquiet International
The chapter “Runts” (formerly “Bryo”) was named a finalist for the 2024 New Letters Conger Beasley Award, the 2024 Narrative Fall Story Contest, the 2021 Iowa Review Contest, and the 2021 Disquiet International Literary Prize.
“South on Sisters” — Witness Magazine
The chapter was runner-up for the 2021 Witness Literary Awards in Nonfiction and published in their spring issue
“A Song for Our Lost Children” — Arts & Letters
The chapter was named a finalist for the 2025 Arts & Letters Susan Atefat Prize for Creative Nonfiction.
Recent fiction recognition
Bad Babies
(A short story collection)
Iowa Short Fiction Award (2024-2025 Finalist)
AWP Grace Paley Prize (2024 Finalist)
Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize (2024 Finalist)
Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest (2024 Finalist)
Previous versions of the collection were also shortlisted for the Bakeless Prize, the Flannery O’Connor Award, Dzanc Books’ Diverse Voices Prize, and the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. And it was longlisted for the Iowa Short Fiction Award.
Immigration Delay Disease
(Novel manuscript)
The Bellingham Review Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction (2021 Winner)
Immigration Delay Disease (novel excerpt) published in the Bellingham Review
Masters Review Anthology XIII (2024 Shortlist)
Mace (novel excerpt)
Novels, Stories and More
Other recent recognition
Novels
Pen/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (2021 Finalist)
Human Enough (novel manuscript)
Stories
Masters Review Summer Short Story Award (2024 Shortlist)
Indiana Review Prize in Fiction (2021 Finalist)
Best American Short Stories (2018 Notable)
More
Sewanee Writers’ Conference (2025)
Keya received the Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Nonfiction in 2025 after receiving the same honor for fiction in 2021
Arnold L. Graves and Lois S. Graves Award (2022)
Funding her research trip to Meghalaya to research the novel Immigration Delay Disease.