The Hooghly Review is a digital non-profit and free-access magazine of literature, culture & arts with the aim to publish creatives in all stages of their career. Named and conceptualised by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury in July 2022, she invited fellow writer-poet and friend, Ankit Raj Ojha, onboard in October 2022. The two have since been editing the magazine, expanding and developing it, and building its foundations to humbly serve the literary community in the years to come.
our mission
Our focus is on individuals and their lived experiences rather than on social/political/religious/cultural communities at large because we understand and recognise 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.
Pull back the curtain for a peek at the internal mechanism of The Hooghly Review from our interviews with Jim Harrington on his blog Six Questions For . . . and with Suchita Senthil Kumar, EIC of Zhagaram Literary.
meet the team
Tejaswinee Roychowdhury is a lawyer, writer, poet, photographer and artist from West Bengal, India. Her fiction has been longlisted for the 2024 Wigleaf Top 50 and solicited for a Mythic Picnic MPTSP V11:Collection (2025), and Lightning Strikes: An Anthology of Flash Fiction by Fifty Indian Writers edited by Vineetha Mokkil (Dhauli Books, 2024). Her poetry has been selected for the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English: 2023 edited by Sukrita Paul Kumar and Vinita Agrawal (Pippa Rann Books, 2024), and solicited for TMYS Review: June 2024 published by Koral Dasgupta’s TMYS in collaboration with the Centre of Asia Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) and the Global South Colloquium, University of Victoria, and Rupa Publications, and for the Toshali Poetry Anthology: 2024. Her photography made the Stanchion Issue 17 cover. In addition, her work has been nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize and 2025 BOTN Anthology. Her work is or will be in Weekly Humorist, Taco Bell Quarterly, HOAX, My India, My Gods edited by Sahana Ahmed (Bare Bones Publishing, 2025), Fiery Scribe Review, Porch Lit, OtB Poetry, Sontag, The Bayou Review, Muse India, and more.
Website: linktr.ee/tejaswinee
Twitter: @TejaswineeRC
Instagram: @tejaswineeroychowdhury
Ankit Raj Ojha is an assistant professor of English, former rock band frontman and former software engineer from Chhapra, Bihar, India. Winner of the Briefly Think Essay Prize 2023 and finalist in the Sundress 2023 Broadside Contest, his writings are curated in seventeen countries, including venues such as Poetry Wales, Poetry Scotland, The Honest Ulsterman, Stanchion, Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Outlook India, Dreich, The Broadkill Review, The Belfast Review, San Antonio Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Paddler Press, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Porch Literary Magazine, BULL, Penn Journal of Arts and Sciences, etc. Ankit is the author of Pinpricks: poems (2022) and editor of Wives: poems (2023). He has a PhD in literature from IIT Roorkee and is currently working with the Department of Higher Education, Haryana. His research on myths, archetypes, posthumanism and postmodern fiction is published with Routledge, Johns Hopkins University Press and Vernon Press. Ankit is an editor at The Hooghly Review, guest editor at Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies (Bingöl University, Türkiye), and consulting editor with five Routledge journals.
Website: https://linktr.ee/rajankit
Twitter: @ankit_raj01
Instagram: @ankitrajojha1
editors in conversation
What kind of work would you like to see more of in the submissions’ inbox for your magazine?
— Suchita Senthil Kumar
I don’t really have a preference. My goal is to make it exciting for the reader and I will always look for variety in the read pile and mix things up.
— Tejaswinee
I’m not picky. I enjoy every genre, every style. And I’d love our submitters to send in a healthy mix [...] try me with anything and everything you’ve got. If I like it, I like it.
— Ankit
Read the full interview at Zhagaram Literary
What advice can you offer others interested in starting their own magazine?
— Jim Harrington
Better have a good team. [...] Establish a rhythm, and have shared values and visions. For me, Ankit and I just clicked in inexplicable ways. We are a good team. Period. There is more spontaneity than planning in the way THR operates. We are willing to stumble, get back up, learn, and grow, over and over again.
— Tejaswinee
I feel that to keep a magazine up and running you have to make it as much about your contributors and readers as it is about you as showrunner. [...] Be a positive force in the publishing industry. [...] Keep the technicalities tight, work hard, treat your audience as you would your friends, and hope for the best while being prepared for the worst.
— Ankit
Read the full interview at Six Questions For . . .