Aruna Gurumurthy

Aruna Gurumurthy is a creative thinker, author, poet and essayist. Since her childhood in Mumbai, India, she has embarked on a journey of creative exploration and, within her prose and poems, captures the beauty and art in the world. 

An observer of human life and nature, Aruna started writing poetry in a moment of epiphany a little over eight years ago, publishing seven books. From wisdom and discovery to development in "Diya," perceptions and change in "Buddha in the Brain," and celebration of life, motherhood and metamorphosis in "Down the Grassy Aisles," she writes on a variety of themes and empowers people from many walks of life.  

Her prose poems, sestinas and free verse may coax the reader into an aura of awe, surprise and sometimes, serious contemplation, as she draws metaphors and linguistic gems that titillate "mental taste buds". Aruna's poems appear in Penguin, Bellevue Literary Review, Chicago Writers' Association's Write City EZine, Appalachian Journal, "Stories that Need to Be Told" by Tulip Tree Publishing, Michigan State University Libraries, storySouth, Penwood Review and others, including the regional anthologies Kakalak, Heron Clan and What it is to Be a Woman, reflecting an insightful journey of struggles and jubilations on the path to peace.

She was the finalist in the NC Poet Laureate Award (2025) and runner-up in Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize (2022).

Aruna lives with her loving family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and brings change in the world, one poem at a time.