Manasi Subramaniam has spent over seventeen years in international trade publishing, working across editorial leadership, literary strategy and international rights. Until December 2025, she was Editor-in-Chief and Vice-President at Penguin Random House India, where she led literary publishing and international rights across five imprints: Hamish Hamilton, Allen Lane, Viking, Penguin Classics and Penguin. Her remit spanned fiction, non-fiction and translation, with responsibility for shaping long-term lists as well as global positioning. Earlier in her career, she held editorial roles at HarperCollins Publishers India, Karadi Tales Company and Anthem Press in London. She has edited and published writers whose work has received major international recognition, including the Booker Prize, International Booker Prize, Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Women’s Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal and National Book Awards, alongside leading Indian literary awards such as the JCB Prize, Sahitya Akademi Award and DSC Prize. Her editorial work is defined by literary ambition combined with political acuity, particularly in contexts shaped by censorship, dissent and sustained democratic pressure.

Manasi’s work sits at the intersection of publishing, cultural diplomacy and international advocacy, with a consistent focus on translation, cross-border literary infrastructure and freedom of expression. This has involved institutional leadership, systems-building and engagement with public and policy-facing debates around culture. Alongside her executive roles, she has maintained a substantial public and institutional presence through writing, speaking and teaching internationally. She has lectured at universities and cultural institutions in India, Germany, Switzerland and the United States, and has been invited to literary festivals, book fairs and conferences in Frankfurt, Paris, Bologna, Sydney, Jerusalem, Cape Town, Boulder, New York, London, Jaipur, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and Leukerbad. As of January 2026, she serves on the advisory board of the SALT Project (South Asian Literature in Translation), a University of Chicago initiative dedicated to advancing the translation, circulation and study of South Asian literatures across languages and regions.

She has held a series of highly selective international fellowships spanning global affairs, democracy and transnational governance. These include the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellowship at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University, awarded to senior practitioners with demonstrated global impact; the Fisher Family Summer Fellowship at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which brings together a small cohort of policy leaders working at the intersection of democratic institutions and public life; and the Raisina Young Fellowship at the Raisina Dialogue, India’s premier forum on geopolitics and global policy. She has also been selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, a designation reserved for individuals shaping global debates and institutions well beyond their immediate fields.

She currently works across cultural institutions, universities, foundations and policy-adjacent environments, drawing on long experience in editorial decision-making, institutional leadership and the governance of cultural organisations.