Nishi Chawla is a writer and retired academician whose work spans fiction, poetry, drama, and independent cinema. She is the author of eight poetry collections, eleven plays, four feature-length art-house films, and three novels. She has also co-edited two landmark poetry anthologies - Singing in the Dark and Greening the Earth—published by Penguin Random House.  Dr. Chawla is only the third Indian poet to be featured on the Library of Congress–sponsored 'Poet and Poem' program. As a playwright, she is among the few Indian dramatists to have multiple plays staged in Manhattan. Her production The Mahatma versus Gurudev premiered in June 2025 to strong reviews, and her other plays continue to be staged across the United States and India. Her filmmaking includes four independent art-house films—Mixed Up, The Strange Case of Normalcy, TechNous, and The Peace Activists. The first three stream on Amazon Prime; the fourth is screened at museums, libraries, and universities worldwide. Her latest novel, Silent Walls, Speaking Stones, was published in Fall 2025. Her forthcoming short-story collection on refugees, Refugee-ing / Skinning, will be published in Fall 2026 in USA.