Rahul Jayaram is a triple postgraduate carrying degrees from three continents: History from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi; Literature from Edinburgh University and Journalism from Columbia University. He was a founding faculty at the Jindal School of Liberal Arts & Humanities at the O P Jindal Global University, arguably India’s first liberal arts undergraduate programme, and later was the founding faculty at Vidyashilp University in Bangalore. He has worked as a journalist in Bombay, Muscat, Bangalore and Delhi for a decade, and his reportage, feature writing, opinion pieces and long-form reportage or essays have appeared in almost every Indian paper, magazine or website of record in English, and some in the Britain, America, Pakistan, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. His creative work was long-listed for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2023, for the Juggernaut Short Story Prize in 2018, and won the Jury Prize at the Tata Literature Festival in Bombay in 2023. He is a previous winner of the National Scholarship at JNU in 2000-2002, the Commonwealth Scholarship at Edinburgh University in 2004-2005 and the International Fellows Program at Columbia University (2011-2012) and was a runner-up for the Harris Prize for best student thesis at Columbia Journalism School in 2012. He was awarded for teaching at the O P Jindal Global University in 2016.
“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.” - Paul Auster from 'Winter Journal'
https://muckrack.com/rahul-jayaram-1/articles
BA English (Majors) University of Bombay: University Second Rank in 2000
National Scholarship: Jawaharlal Nehru University (2000 - 2002) owing to the University second rank in the BA programme
Commonwealth Scholarship: Edinburgh University (2004 - 2005)
International Fellows Program: Columbia University (2011 - 2012)
Harris Prize Runner-Up award: For second-best student MA thesis in a class of 60 students at Columbia Journalism School of Columbia University
Best Teacher Award: O P Jindal Global University (2016)
Juggernaut Short Story Award: Long-listed (2018)
Commonwealth Short Story Prize: Long-listed (2024)
Tata Literature Festival: Jury Prize winner (2023)
