Publishing Career
Subramaniam was Editor-in-Chief and Vice-President at Penguin Random House India until December 2025. In this role, she oversaw literary publishing across imprints including Allen Lane, Viking, Hamish Hamilton, Penguin and Penguin Classics. [20] [21] She has worked in the past with HarperCollins Publishers India.
Subramaniam has writers across South Asia who have received international literary recognition, including winners of the Booker Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, and several winners and finalists of international awards including the National Book Awards, Folio, JCB Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Women's Prize, Desmond Elliott Prize, among others.
She is known for publishing The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, which won the 2022 Booker Prize, [22] [23] Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, which won the 2022 International Booker Prize, [24] [25] [26] Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, [27] [28] A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, [29] A Burning by Megha Majumdar, which won the 2022 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, [30] Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line [31] by Deepa Anappara, which was nominated for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction and the 2020 JCB Prize for Literature, 3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, among others.
She has worked with Arundhati Roy, [32] Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, [33] Neel Mukherjee, Akhil Sharma, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pico Iyer, Sunjeev Sahota, Tahmima Anam, Manu Pillai, [34] [35] [36] Jeet Thayil, Gurmehar Kaur, [37] Meena Kandasamy, [38] [39] Raj Kamal Jha, [40] Harsh Mander, Kalki Koechlin, Srinath Raghavan and many others. She is the English-language publisher for several works of the Tamil writer Perumal Murugan [41] [42] and several other Indian writers in translation.
At Penguin Random House India, Subramaniam led initiatives focused on translation and linguistic diversity. She was a member of the company’s DEI Council [43] and oversaw a significant expansion of translated literature across Indian languages, increasing the range of languages and regions represented on the literary list. Her work in this area emphasised translation as a central publishing strategy rather than a subsidiary programme, with a focus on cross-regional circulation and international visibility for translated works.
Other Activities
Subramaniam has worked in academic research and amateur theatre. [44] She written about books for Scroll.in, [45] The Wire, [46] The Hindu Business Line, [47] The Hindu Literary Review, [48] The Asian Review of Books, [49] Mint Lounge [50] [51] and The Sunday Guardian.
She has been invited to speak at international literary festivals including the Tata Literature Live! festival in Mumbai, the Times Literature Festival in Bangalore and New Delhi, the Bangalore Literature Festival, the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters in Trivandrum, the Kerala Literature Festival in Kozhikode where she has been in conversation with Abraham Verghese, [52] Jenny Erpenbeck, Georgi Gospodinov and Paul Lynch, [53] and the Jaipur Literature Festival in Jaipur and Boulder, where she has been in conversation with writers including Jenny Erpenbeck and Michael Hoffman, [54] Arundhathi Subramaniam, [55] Tiffany Tsao, [56] T.M. Krishna, [57] Mukesh Bansal, [58] Defne Suman, [59] Santiago Roncagliolo, [60] Jamie O'Connell, [61] Gopalkrishna Gandhi, [62] [63] Daniil Tolstoy and Chigozie Obioma. [64]
Following her departure from Penguin Random House India in 2025, Subramaniam has worked independently across publishing, cultural institutions and international networks.
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