An independent publisher, archive, and library, in Mumbai, since 2010.
Founded by Shobhna S Kumar in 2010 as India's first online queer bookstore. Today, a five-part ecosystem holding queer Indian lives in print, on record, in conversation, and in the writing happening now.
What we do.
We hold queer Indian lives — through publishing, archives, a digital library, a public knowledge exchange, and editorial writing.
The publishing imprint issues books drawn from the Queer India Archives — anthologies, edited collections, oral histories shaped into book form, recovered manuscripts. Queer Ink Swabhimaan, our forthcoming sister imprint, supports queer Indian writers to publish their own work, with mentorship, the Storytellers Studio, and crowdfunding-led publication.
The Queer India Archives preserve oral histories, photographs, correspondence, organisational records, zines, ephemera, and material culture from queer Indian lives and movements. Eight active collections, held in trust on terms set by contributors.
The Queer Ink Digital Library makes queer Indian literature and history searchable, public-facing, and openly accessible. Books, documents, oral histories, films, and curated collections — for readers, researchers, students, and community members anywhere.
QBlog is the editorial writing space — Shobhna’s reflections, essays, and notes from inside the work.
QConversations is the public knowledge exchange — a sustained practice of public posts, free engagement on social platforms, and paid private consultations for focused thinking.
Why we work this way.
Queer Indian lives have been documented sporadically, preserved occasionally, and included in the country’s official record almost never. What has been kept has often been kept by chance.
Queer Ink exists to change that — not through any single act, but through sustained, considered, long-horizon work. Books that take years to produce. Archives built on terms set by the communities they record. A library designed to be findable in a world that is narrowing access. A blog that adds the missing perspective. Conversations that keep getting asked.
The work is small, slow, and independent by choice. It is funded by readers, patrons, and reciprocal Pay-It-Forward contributions — never by advertising, never by sources that would compromise contributor trust. It is produced by one person, for now, with collaborators when the work calls for them.
It is, deliberately, the kind of cultural work that serves a generation rather than a season.
"Our voices shatter the silence we inherited, so the future must never know the choice of the closet."
Shobhna S Kumar — founder.
Shobhna S Kumar founded Queer Ink in 2010 as India’s first online queer bookstore. In 2012 she published Out! Stories from the New Queer India, edited by Minal Hajratwala — Queer Ink’s first book, the foundational anthology of contemporary queer Indian writing.
Born in Fiji and raised partly in Australia, she settled in India in 2002. She is a publisher, archivist, and editor whose work over fifteen years has held queer Indian lives in print, on record, and in conversation. The Queer India Archives, established formally in 2023 after years of informal collection, are the centre of gravity of the current work — alongside the publishing imprint, the digital library, and the public knowledge exchange.
She lives and works in Mumbai. Contact: shobhna@queer-ink.com.
Team.
Queer Ink is a sole-trader practice — Shobhna at its centre, with collaborators brought in for specific work. Editors, designers, translators, researchers, and archival specialists work with the imprint and the Archives on a project basis. The work is small by design.
If you would like to work with Queer Ink in a specialist capacity — editorial, archival, design, translation, research — write to shobhna@queer-ink.com with a brief note about your work and what calls you to ours.
Press and media.
Press inquiries, interview requests, photograph requests, and media partnerships: please write to shobhna@queer-ink.com with the subject line PRESS — [your publication].
A press kit, including high-resolution photographs of Shobhna, the Queer Ink logo files, and brief organisational descriptions in a range of lengths, is available on request.
For book reviews, please contact us for review copies of any titles in the catalogue.
Annual report.
Queer Ink publishes an annual report each April, marking the imprint’s founding date. The report covers the year’s work — books published, archive collections expanded, library growth, QConversations engagement, and finances at a level appropriate to a small independent organisation.
Read the annual reports:
2025 (PDF)
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2024 (PDF)
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2023 (PDF)
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Earlier reports on request