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.

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)