Dustin Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press. He has contributed to Huffington Post, Café Dissensus Everyday, The Statesman (India), Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, The Colorado Review, World Literature Today, Asymptote, and several other publications. He was given the honor Knight of World Peace by the World Institute for Peace in 2022. He is author of the poetry collections Salt and Sorrow, Knows No End, The Alderman, Only and Again, The Nothing Epistle, The Stone and the Square, and several others, as well as the novella Be Not Afraid of What You May Find. His most recent book is Crime of the Extraordinary (Hawakal Publishers, 2024). You can find him on Instagram: @poetpickering and Twitter: @DustinPickerin2.
Poetry is a prayerful medium to explore complex, living concepts. Just as fruit falls from the bough to decay within earth and feed the tree, Rajorshi Patranabis’s presents the ritual of cyclical love and devotion in his new collection. By Dustin Pickering
The ecopoems in Gopal Lahiri’s Anemone Morning delve into a kind of exploratory myth that engages readers with creative potential, stressing that there could be no division between who we are and where we are. By Dustin Pickering
Published in India’s 75th year of Independence, Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians (2022) presents unique and diverse voices from the diaspora, with poems that are a sustained discussion with history, oneself, the environment, myth, science, and relationships. By Dustin Pickering
Whimsical and wise, reflective and poignant, Nivedita Dey poems are a contrast to the gloomy poetry of our age, even while delving into the darkest recesses. She passionately declares space for poetry’s possibilities and promises. By Dustin Pickering
Spun with compassion and realism, the stories from Varanasi in Vivek Nath Mishra’s collection No One An Outsider ask contrasting questions of belonging, compassion, self-destructiveness, and death. By Dustin Pickering
“Poetry is the diary I always carry with me.” Gopal Lahiri’s collection Selected Poems (2025) cultivates a privacy that invites readers to the poet’s second self in consciousness. By Dustin Pickering