a digital magazine of literature & arts


Founded by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury as a passion project in July 2022 from the city of Chandannagar on the banks of the Hooghly river in West Bengal, India, and edited by Ankit Raj Ojha and Tejaswinee Roychowdhury, The Hooghly Review is a digital non-profit and free-access magazine of literature & arts with the aim to shine a light on emerging and underrated writers, storytellers, poets, artists, and other creatives across the globe.

Our focus is on individuals and their lived experiences rather than on social/political/religious/cultural communities at large because we understand and recognize 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.

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Devprayag (Sanskrit for “Godly confluence”) in Uttarakhand is where the rivers Alakananda and Bhagirathi meet to form the Ganges or the holy Ganga. The river flows eastward down the Northern plains of India through Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal. In the Murshidabad district of West Bengal, the Farakka Barrage diverts the river water into the Farakka Feeder Canal which joins the Bhagirathi-Hooghly river at Jahangirpur, while the main Ganga flows into Bangladesh as the Padma.

This magazine is named after the Bhagirathi-Hooghly river, or simply the Hooghly.



Photo by Ravi Kant (Pexels)

The Hooghly in Chandannagar — Tejaswinee Roychowdhury

The Ganga in Roorkee — Ankit Raj Ojha

current issue

Issue 1 — April 2023

EDITORIAL — Ankit Raj Ojha

FEATURE — Nandan (National Award-winning filmmaker)

POETRY — Ace Boggess | Ali Ashhar | Alka Balain | Ankur Jyoti Saikia | Ashwini Gangal | Christina Chin and Michael Hough | Clayre Benzadón | Gerard Sarnat | Gopal Lahiri | Gretchen Filart | Ilana Drake | Jennifer Jones | Jose Hernandez Diaz | Joshua St. Claire | K Weber | Kate Deimling | L M Cole | Laszlo Aranyi (translated from the Hungarian by Gabor Gyukics) | Moira Walsh | Mozid Mahmud | Pramod Subbaraman | Ronita Chattopadhyay | S.T. Brant | Sahana Ahmed | Sanjeev Sethi | Shiksha Dheda | Uchechukwu Onyedikam | Yusuf Olamilekan 

FICTION — Aniket Sanyal | Bupinder Singh | Casandra Hernandez Rios | DC Diamondopolous | Elisha Oluyemi | Esther Mubawa | François Bereaud | Imelda Wei Ding Lo | Judy Darley | Mehreen Ahmed | Mugdhaa Ranade | Sahana Ahmed | Sara Dobbie | Shih-Li Kow | Sreelekha Chatterjee | Sumitra Singam | Sunil Sharma | Swetha Amit | Tom Ball | Victoria Leigh Bennett | Wayne McCray

CREATIVE NONFICTION — Colin Dardis | Irene Gentle | Katherine Varga | Melissa Flores Anderson | Melissa Nunez | Rebecca Minelga | Sonia Dogra | Tabish Nawaz

ESSAY — Jayant Kashyap

DRAMA — Amit Majmudar | Bryan William Myers | Gary Beck | Jacob Holley-Kline | Kerry Langan | Mike Guerin | William Kitcher 

BOOK REVIEW — Ankit Raj Ojha | Mohini Sharda

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY — Aaron Bowker | Anthony Acri | Arunava Bal | D.C. Nobes | Edward Michael Supranowicz | Jerome Berglund | K Weber | Merlin Flower | Michael Noonan

COMICS — Bethany Jarmul | Shivalika Agarwal | Sowmya