Nishant Batsha


Photograph of Nishant Batsha

Nishant Batsha is the author of the novel Mother Ocean Father Nation (ecco/HarperCollins). The book was a finalist for 2023 Lambda Literary Award, longlisted for a 2023 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and named one of the best books of 2022 by NPR. It also won Honorable Mention in the prose category of the 2024 Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Book Awards.

He is currently at work on A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart (ecco/HarperCollins, 2025), a novel set between California and New York at the dawn of World War I. The in-progress manuscript was named a finalist for a grant from the de Groot Foundation.

Nishant holds a PhD in history from Columbia University and is a former Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. He lives in Buffalo, NY with his wife and two children.


Author photo courtesy of Libby March.