Mona Arshi is a poet, novelist and essayist, who previously trained as a human rights lawyer at Liberty. Her debut collection Small Hands won the Forward Prize for best first collection in 2015; her second Dear Big Gods was published in 2019. Her writing has been featured in The Times, The Guardian, Granta, The Yale Review and The Times of India as well as on the London Underground. In 2020, she was awarded an Honorary Professorship at the University of Liverpool and appointed a fellow in creative arts at Trinity College, Cambridge. Her novel Somebody Loves You (2021) was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, Desmond Eliot Prize and Jhalak Prize. Mona is co-editor of an anthology, Nature Matters (2025). Her third poetry collection Mouth was published in July 2025.