Sneha Madhavan-Reese is the author of the poetry collections Elementary Particles and Observing the Moon. Her poems have appeared in publications in Canada, the US, Ireland, Iraq, Australia, South Africa, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Literary Review of Canada, The Moth, New Contrast, The New Quarterly, Rabbit Poetry Journal, Rattle, Global Poetry Anthology 2015, and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016. Her essay “My Poetic Education” appeared in 2017 as part of The New Quarterly’s Falling in Love with Poetry series.
She is the 2015 winner of Arc Poetry Magazine's Diana Brebner Prize, was shortlisted for the 2015 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and received an honourable mention at the 2018 National Magazine Awards. Other prizes she’s been shortlisted for include the Alfred G. Bailey Prize (2013), The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Prize for Poetry (2014), The Malahat Review’s Open Season Award for Poetry (2018 & 2022), The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize (2020), and The Bridport Prize for Poetry (2022). She was named a Hot Ottawa Voice in 2014 by the Tree Reading Series and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021 by Understorey Magazine.
Sneha earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, with minors in literature and chemistry, from MIT in 2000, and she completed a master's degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan in 2002. She lives with her husband and their three children in Ottawa, Ontario — traditional unceded Algonquin Anishinaabeg territory.
She currently serves on the editorial board of the feminist literary magazine Canthius, and she is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. She served as a juror for the League's inaugural Lesley Strutt Poetry Contest in 2021, and she is a member of the League's Parenting Poets committee. She gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the City of Ottawa, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Tree Reading Series, Ottawa, 26 March 2013.