Sona Charaipotra


Sona Charaipotra is an American entertainment and lifestyle journalist, screenwriter, and a bestselling author of young adult fiction. She was an editor at People, Parents.com, and other major media, and is best known for her YA lit column on Parade.com and her YA series Tiny Pretty Things.

Early life

Charaipotra is Indian-American, born to two pediatrician parents. Despite family hopes of becoming a doctor, she chose to become a writer. She has two siblings.
Charaipotra attended Rutgers University with a double major in journalism and American studies. She earned a master's degree in dramatic writing and South Asian diaspora studies from NYU in 2006. In 2012, Charaipotra graduated with an MFA from The New School, where she studied creative writing in the Writing for Children program.
Sona Charaipotra has two kids. She is married to the author and professor Navdeep Singh Dhillon, who wrote the YA novel ''Sunny G's Series of Rash Decisions.''

Career

Aside from writing novels, she is a freelance journalist and editor for entertainment sites like The New York Times, Cosmopolitan'','' Bustle.com, Parade.com, Teen Vogue, Vulture.com, and other US media. Charaipotra made a name as a celebrity journalist for People and an editor at the now defunct TeenPeople. She has also been an editor for parenting publications like WhatToExpect.com and TheBump.com, and was the editor of the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog. She was a from 2021 to 2024.
In 2011, Charaipotra co-founded CAKE Literary, a "boutique book development company with a decidedly diverse bent", with her Tiny Pretty Things co-author Dhonielle Clayton. The two friends met at The New School at the beginning of their MFA and bonded over a shared feeling that they were unrepresented in children and YA books growing up and wanting to change that. They founded CAKE Literary on the belief that "rich, diversity-infused reads that are still compulsively readable — and very relatable" are possible. The company focuses on developing readable, high concept ideas to middle grade, YA, and women's fiction. In 2021, Clayton relaunched the company as Cake Creative.
Charaipotra was a founding board member of the South Asian Journalists Association and a board member of We Need Diverse Books, a non-profit organization focused on increasing diversity in book publishing.
She is also a working screenwriter, whose projects have been developed by MTV films.

Selected works

Her solo debut, Symptoms of a Heartbreak, was inspired by shows like Doogie Howser, M.D. Charaipotra saw the novel as an opportunity to write a similar story with Indian protagonists. Her 2022 novel How Maya Got Fierce is based on her own experiences working as a woman of color in the New York magazine industry. A Netflix Original TV show based on Charaipotra's series Tiny Pretty Things, was released in October 2020, but cancelled after only one season.

Novels

  1. Tiny Pretty Things
  2. Shiny Broken Pieces
  3. The Rumor Game Symptoms of a Heartbreak
  • ''How Maya Got Fierce''

Anthologies (Editor)

Magic Has No Borders
  • ''Home Has No Borders''

Short stories

Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion