Meera Subramanian

Biography

Meera Subramanian is an independent journalist and author of A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis (PublicAffairs, 2015). She has been published in the New York Times, Scientific American, Nature, and Orion, among others.

Meera Subramanian
Boyle Photography

See Work

ESSAYS / Fall 2024

A Measure of Gratitude

By Meera Subramanian ,  Illustration by Hanna Barczyk

We were two women on either side of thirty throwing punches at one another’s faces in a concrete stairwell abuzz with florescent light. Our instructor showed us how to make a fist (thumbs on the outside), take aim, and put our weight into...

Barczyk
PHOTOGRAPHY / Fall 2021

Strange Gardens

Photography by Alicja Wróblewska ,  Essay by Meera Subramanian

What is beauty for? What is its source? Polish artist Alicja Wróblewska thinks about such things as she fashions fanciful sculptures, snaps photographs, and creates collages both analog and digital to explore the impact of plastics on ocean...

Photography by Alicja Wróblewska
#VQRTRUESTORY / Winter 2016

Elemental India

By Meera Subramanian

For #VQRTrueStory, our new social-media experiment in nonfiction, Meera Subramanian reports on a changing India. Follow @vqreview to keep up with the project.
REPORTING / Spring 2011

India’s Vanishing Vultures

By Meera Subramanian

Can the world’s fastest growing nation restore its prime scavenger before there are untold human consequences?

Before the recent species collapse, vultures were a vital part of India's sanitation, cleaning carcasses and, as here, scavenging human remains left at the ghats on the banks of rivers.
REPORTING / Winter 2014

India’s Golden Chance

By Meera Subramanian ,  Photography by Allison Joyce

Behind the headlines of sexual violence is a culture where girls are forced into marriage and early motherhood. How will the next generation break the cycle?

Girls walking to school through the town center in rural Bihar, 2013. (All photographs by Allison Joyce/Redux)
REPORTING / Spring 2011

India’s Vanishing Vultures

By Meera Subramanian ,  Photography by Ami Vitale

Can the world’s fastest growing nation restore its prime scavenger before there are untold human consequences?