Reena Kapoor

As an “army brat” growing up in India, Reena Kapoor lived all over the country - attending eight schools - and feels lucky for having had that wandering life. Reena has been active in writing, theatre and performance since her early school years. Reena has been muddling with poetry for over a decade, claiming her poems write themselves; she just shows up! Arrivals & Departures is Reena Kapoor's debut poetry collection. Her poems take the reader on journeys through a multitude of places, time periods, and emotions. From the nostalgia of one's homeland, to the suffering and resilience of women who experienced India's 1947 Partition, to parenthood, to life's other simple pleasures, Arrivals & Departures draws readers into new worlds and allows them to find themselves within.

Reena’s poetry and fiction has been published in The Bluebird Word, Discretionary Love, Potato Soup, Ariel Chart, 433 Magazine, Literary Yard, Tiny Seed, Visible, and India Currents. Reena wrote her first play “Art of the Possible'' for EnActe Arts, a leading San Francisco Bay Area theatre company. As the first playwright-in-residence in EnActe’s WEFT (“women enact for themselves”) program, four of Reena’s plays were produced in April 2021.

Reena has also been a Citizen Historian with The 1947 Partition Archive collecting oral histories from witnesses of India’s Partition, for over a decade. Reena actively blogs at www.arrivalsanddepartures.substack.com and posts her photo-art on Instagram.

Reena is also an avid photographer and can be found on Instagram at @1stardusty and her photo-art prints are to be found at reena-kapoor.pixels.com.

Reena lives in California with her human family and their beloved Labradoodle Dishoom! Reena graduated with an undergraduate engineering degree from IIT Delhi and a graduate degree from Northwestern University. Reena works as a software product professional in Silicon Valley. She is an active executive mentor to social enterprises through Santa Clara University’s Miller Center accelerator.