Richa Kaul Padte, long bio

Richa Kaul Padte (she/her) is a writer, editor and the author of Cyber Sexy: Rethinking Pornography (Penguin Random House India, 2018), a critically-acclaimed exploration of online sex cultures in South Asia and beyond. Cyber Sexy was named a best book of 2018 by Scroll, The Telegraph, The Deccan Herald and Feminism in India, and longlisted for the Atta-Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Prize. Richa has also been featured on Grazia India’s 2018 Cool List, and Cosmo India’s 24th Anniversary issue of fearless women. A full list of press coverage that features Richa and her work can be found here, and more about Cyber Sexy here.

In 2015, Richa co-founded Deep Dives, an imprint focussed on longform storytelling, with Bishakha Datta. In 2017, Deep Dives won the South Asian Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity for Sexing the Interwebs, a series edited by Richa in her capacity as managing editor.

Richa has helped create several digital resources, including sexualityanddisability.org, India’s first sex and disability resource. She has also been the editor on several feminist technology projects including reports on technology-related violence for the Association for Progressive Communications. In 2020, she edited A is for Another: A Dictionary of AI, a Berlin-based School of Disobedience project.

Richa has edited the book Who Really Feeds the World? The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology (Penguin Random House US, 2016) by the environmentalist Dr Vandana Shiva. Her second edited book, a retelling of fairytales by disabled Indian women, is forthcoming from HarperCollins India. Richa sits on the advisory board of the gender and disability rights organisation Rising Flame.

Richa’s reporting, essays and other writing have appeared in several places including BuzzFeed, VICE, Bitch, Racked, Hazlitt, National Geographic Traveller India, Catapult Magazine, India Today, The Economic and Political Weekly, The Hindu, Caravan Magazine, Open Magazine, Economic Times and The Nib. Richa is listed on the masthead of online literary magazine Electric Literature as a contributing writer. A selected portfolio of her writing can be found here.