11th February 2026
Chitra Ramaswamy is an author, journalist, and broadcaster, and our first session of 2026 will take the format of a conversation about her latest book Homelands: The History of a Friendship, which explores her friendship with a German Jewish refugee and Holocaust survivor. Chitra has contributed essays to a diverse range of publications, and has written a book of micro-essays Rich Things for the Alasdair Gray Archive. She currently writes for The Guardian, is the restaurant critic for The Times Scotland, and is working on her next book. She is from London, but now lives in Edinburgh.
Biography
Chitra is an award-winning journalist, writing mostly for The Guardian, and has extensive experience in chairing, broadcasting, interviewing, talks, panels, and workshops. She is an author and in April 2016 her first book Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy, a creative memoir comprising nine essays for the nine months of pregnancy and birth, was published. It won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize.
Chitra’s second book, Homelands: The History of a Friendship, is a hybrid biography-memoir exploring her friendship with Henry Wuga, a 98-year-old German Jewish refugee who came to Britain in the spring of 1939 on a Kindertransport. It won the Saltire Non Fiction Book of the Year and was selected by The Guardian as one of their top memoirs and biographies of 2022, where it was described by the reviewer as ”achingly beautiful – at times it left me with an ache I struggled to name”. Chitra has contributed essays to Antlers of Water, Nasty Women, The Freedom Papers, The Bi:ble, and Message From the Skies, a project which invited six writers to pen love letters to Europe, which were projected onto chosen buildings across Edinburgh. Chitra is currently working on a commission from the Alasdair Gray Archive to respond to pieces in the late writer’s archive in Glasgow.
In her work as a journalist, Chitra is a freelance TV critic, features and opinion writer for The Guardian, the restaurant critic for The Times (Scottish edition) and she broadcasts for BBC Radio. Chitra is British Indian, from London, and based in Edinburgh with her partner, two children, and rescue dog.
