Our Story: Independent by Design

• Publishing: Creating and circulating new queer literature and scholarship.
• Archives: Preserving personal, organisational, and community histories.
• Digital Library: Providing access to books, documents, oral histories, and curated collections.
• Public Engagement: Creating opportunities for conversation, learning, and knowledge exchange.

Together, these initiatives help ensure that queer stories are not only created but also preserved, discovered, and carried forward.

Queer lives in India have often been under-published, under-documented, and under-preserved. Stories have disappeared. Records have been lost. Books have gone out of print. Community histories have remained scattered across personal collections, organisational archives, and individual memories.

As a result, many people looking for themselves in the historical record have found very little. Queer Ink exists in response to this absence.

We believe that literature, archives, access, and dialogue matter deeply:

• Publishing creates new knowledge.
• Archives preserve memory.
• Libraries make knowledge discoverable.
• QConversations keep knowledge alive through dialogue and community exchange.

Together, these elements allow ideas, experiences, and histories to circulate across generations. Our work is guided by a simple commitment: to strengthen the record of queer India and to make it easier for people to find, engage with, and contribute to that record. We are building not only for today’s community, but also for those who will come looking years from now.

Shobhna S. Kumar is the Founder and Publisher of Queer Ink, where she provides the strategic leadership behind the organisation’s work in publishing, archives, digital access, and public engagement.

Founded in 2010, Queer Ink has grown under her leadership from India’s first online queer bookstore into an institution dedicated to preserving, publishing, and sharing the stories, histories, and knowledge of LGBTQIA+ communities in India. Today, its work spans Queer Ink Publishing, the Queer India Archives, the Queer Ink Digital Library, and initiatives that foster dialogue, research, and community participation.

Shobhna’s work is centred on the belief that publishing and archives are complementary practices. While publishing brings new voices and ideas into the world, archives preserve the records, memories, and materials that deepen our understanding of the past. Together, they create a continuum of knowledge that informs scholarship, enriches public discourse, and ensures that queer histories remain accessible to future generations.

Her leadership reflects a commitment to building enduring institutions rather than isolated projects. By bringing together publishing, archives, digital access, and public engagement within a single ecosystem, she is working to create sustainable pathways through which queer knowledge can be preserved, discovered, and shared.

Shobhna’s long-term vision for Queer Ink is to positively influence the trajectories of future generations of queer Indians by ensuring that their stories are preserved, published, and made accessible to all who seek to understand them.

Collaboration has always shaped Queer Ink. Over the years, writers, editors, archivists, researchers, librarians, designers, translators, students, volunteers, institutions, and collection contributors have all played vital roles in the development of this work.

We are profoundly grateful to the many individuals and organisations who have shared their knowledge, records, expertise, trust, and support along the way. While Queer Ink remains founder-led, a wider community sustains and strengthens it. Every book published, record preserved, and conversation hosted becomes part of a larger effort to ensure that future generations can find the stories and knowledge that came before them.

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