Jeevika Verma
Jeevika Verma joined NPR's Morning Edition and Up First as a producer in February 2020. During her time there, she's produced a variety of stories ranging from Afghanistan peace talks, COVID surges in India and local & state elections. Verma also contributes to arts and poetry coverage for NPR's culture desk, and is always trying to get more poets on air. She leads the Morning Edition diversity council and works on DEI efforts across the network to help NPR live up to its mission.
Verma came to Morning Edition from WNYC's The Takeaway where she produced national segments in addition to supporting the daily live show. Originally from India, she got her master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she spent months producing long-form works of narrative journalism on the opioid crisis, power struggles within the South Asian community and the mental health of couples struggling with addiction. Prior to that, she worked in marketing, public relations and publishing. Her first stint at NPR was actually a corporate communications and media relations internship in 2017. Verma is a part-time tarot reader and full-time poet. She also spent the last few years as a freelance writer for several publications and created some independent zines.
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In her new collection, Egypt-born poet Marwa Helal plays with language to challenge the way we approach our problems. -
Either/Or is Batuman's sequel to her bestselling Pulitzer finalist novel The Idiot. -
Naheed Phiroze Patel's debut novel Mirror Made of Rain is out in the U.S. this week. -
The award-winning poet's new collection, The Hurting Kind, is a testament to the power of sensitivity and to the reality that the world is here to both guide us and lead us astray. -
Poet Adam Wolfland identifies as neurodivergent and autistic. He says poetry is in his body — he types and moves to communicate and his poetry is multidimensional. -
Ocean Vuong's second poetry collection, Time is a Mother, grapples with time and its impermanence following his mother's death in 2019. -
In her highly anticipated second collection, Solmaz Sharif examines the language of rules — exploring conformity and naming losses. Migration, borders, and displacement are constants in these poems. -
Poets Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi, Dan "Sully" Sullivan, and club founder Peter Kahn have curated a new anthology celebrating the legacy of a Chicago-area high school's spoken word club. -
A psychiatrist says calling it a disease takes important attention away from racism and other things that are often associated with addiction. -
Victoria Chang traces her family history through letter writing in her book, Dear Memory. In an NPR interview, she talks facing micro and macro aggressions and staying silent, just like her parents.
