Upasna and I met online a few years ago. I was drawn to her charismatic personality and dedication to amplify and promote South Asian voices in children’s literature. Later, she invited me to Varta, a South-Asia-inspired storytelling festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’m pleased to welcome Upasna Kakroo to Cynsations to discuss her non-profit organization, Peerbagh, and her mission.
Peerbagh is a non-profit organization dedicated to organizing and promoting South-Asia-inspired storytelling, a children’s magazine, and creating toolkits for educators and families. What was your inspiration behind Peerbagh?
We began as a volunteer collective during the pandemic. My sister, Vatsala began The Everything Times, a monthly digital publication in June 2021.It shared stories from children in the U.S., Canada and India and began as a way to creatively engage kids in that weird time.
In the fall of 2022, I was in a corporate meeting when a colleague said, non-native English speakers can’t be creative. That created a need for me to engage in research, not just as a person of color in the U.S., but also as a parent of a young child. I didn’t want to complain but find ways to contribute meaningfully to question statistics that really bothered me.
The fact that 70% of lead characters in children’s books were animals or white, just did not sit well with me. Over 50% of kids in classrooms self-report as coming from diverse backgrounds. Why would we not care about giving them books that reflect their experiences? This pushed me into thinking about a nonprofit organization and building a vision and mission around the systemic challenges in children’s storytelling.
We were thinking about the name and tossed out hundreds of ideas that evoked childhood nostalgia. Eventually, we settled on Peerbagh, because this is where we were born. Peerbagh means the garden (bagh) of the wise (peer). As someone who was internally displaced as a child, it is connected to the child in me. Peerbagh imagines a world where all stories matter, and personally, I am creating a space I wish I had growing up.
How do you go about choosing the authors and speakers for your events?
When I was a kid, I knew no writers personally. Now with social media and the internet, it’s possible to find current writers and reach out to them. When we began as a brand new organization, we reached out to plenty of writers. About 20% of them responded to our direct messages, and that’s how we connected for small interviews in the beginning.
Our first Varta storytelling festival was a part of a larger event in India in Dehradun with two other partners. So, we didn’t control all elements of the event. We invited a few authors who we didn’t know at all. Some of them were recommended by publishers. A few of them cancelled at the last minute. And a few others wanted more five-star living arrangements. There were a lot of learnings from this experience.
Spotlighting work from South Asian writers in a meaningful way and creating a platform for work coming from the diaspora and the subcontinent is a privilege and work we enjoy. There is no room for negative energy, otherwise there’s no point in doing this work. We are not a private organization hosting million-dollar events. And that’s okay; we can’t be everything for everyone. Our focus shall always be to bring new reads in front of our families, and not to be the Elon Musk of storytelling.
Now we have a simple process:
- We read hundreds of books often as a part of our annual Ash Rose Michael reader’s choice honors that we have been hosting for three years.
- Based on our reading, we reach out to authors or creatives and host them for an interview or a reading in our online Bento StoryLabs. We have invited some to be guests for our Zubaani podcast. But the key is we love their books.
- For in-person events like Varta, we reach out to authors we have connected with previously and whose work we enjoy. We also keep in mind the audience and age groups that make most sense.
- As a South-Asia wide nonprofit organization, we take care to include authors with heritage from all South Asian countries and diaspora communities.
Tell us about Bento. What is it and what can readers get out of it?
Bento is the only South-Asia-inspired children’s magazine in print. In 2024, it was an editor’s pick for best holiday reads, and it was listed on the Midwest review as a top resource in 2025. Bento shares history, stories, folk, book recommendations, author interviews, poetry, art, games, quizzes, activities, and more in an illustrated format.
We cover all eight South Asian countries and the diaspora. Bento is lucky to have featured work from award-winning writers and illustrators. While anyone can enjoy Bento, it is best suited to readers aged 8-12 years. However, as a reader myself, I enjoy reading Bento as an adult, too. It helps build curiosity and makes storytelling accessible to families. Bento was launched in 2024 to honor the legacy of Vatsala who began this work, but unfortunately passed away at a young age in 2024.
We take a lot of pride in sharing that we work with academics from many different universities across the world (some of them are on our board). This enables us to bring historical information or stories that are well researched. Anyone with an interest in the history, culture, and oral traditions can enjoy Bento. It publishes every quarter as per themes.
Some of our thematic ideas have been environmental conservation, belonging, our connection with technology and more. Apart from professional creatives, we have a team of student reporters from four countries who add their ideas to the student voices section. It helps us make art that connects with young kids from across the world. Bento currently goes to 150 cities in the US, India, Canada, and the U.K.
How can educators benefit from your on-demand toolkits?
In 2022, when we were in the process of developing a vision and mission for the nonprofit, we imagined creating an experiential resource for families. We wanted to build screen-free tools for parents or educators where they would be able to bring cultural stories in front of kids and encourage reading. There’s so much pressure on educators and parents to teach everything from language to writing to culture to world stories. Our hope was that we provide something that eases off a little pressure. In the absence of a true village, we are trying to build a third space and tools that support families.
All Bento members get monthly printables, access to StoryLabs with authors chats and activities. The Bento magazine itself has activities and book recommendations by various age groups. It’s an easy way for educators to select books for their book clubs or lessons. Only 10% of books K-12 are published by authors of color. So, often, children have to rely on books from outside the usual curriculum. We take our book recommendations very seriously, and read every single book before it is recommended. These are not sponsored listings, these are books we love as readers. The information in toolkits, Bento, and all our channels is helpful to any educator (or parent) to build culturally-responsive activities and share information in a fun way. With reading scores plummeting nation-wide, it’s a way to encourage reading and writing through prompts. Many kids are excited to respond to our contests and writing prompts that may get published in future Bento issues.
Could you tell us about the various in-person and online workshops you offer?
All our upcoming events are listed on our monthly newsletter. This is freely available to anyone who signs up. Since our members are in different parts of the world, we conduct many online workshops. These include storytelling sessions, creative writing workshops, and author visits. We have one flagship in-person event, Varta that has gone to Austin, Ann Arbor, and Dehradun so far. This usually happens in a public library or university and is free for everyone to attend.
We also conduct school visits or partner with local nonprofits/ organizations to share stories around various festivals, storytelling resources and activities, or conduct a Bento writing workshop. In 2026, we will be providing quarterly Bento StoryLabs which will include performances by a Dastango, and writing workshops by various authors including Meera Sriram, Mitali Banerjee Ruths, and others. Our in-person workshops will be announced once we’re ready with the plans.
You work from four in-person locations—Austin, Montreal, Ann Arbor, and Dehradun, as well as globally through online workshops. How has the experience been? How did you manage to bring together young readers across the globe together for the love of literature?
Austin is where Peerbagh is incorporated and that is where we began. It’s been interesting to be a part of a vibrant community and families that really appreciate the work in bringing South Asian stories to them. Many of our event attendees tell us that they missed having such experiences as children growing up away from their heritage cultures. This work is very relevant to immigrant families raising children who have dual or multiple identities. They validate experiences through stories and books.
We have done a couple events at Ann Arbor, and it’s a brand new location for us. The community is very diverse and isn’t just South Asian. So, we’re curious to see how it grows. Montreal is where our work began (in the pre-Peerbagh times). Due to Vatsala’s unfortunate loss, it has been less of a focus. But we’re looking to collaborate with kidlit writers from across Canada to continue serving the community. Recently, we collaborated with Canadian author Salma Hussain who is the co-host of Peerbagh’s Zubaani podcast that reviews books and features South Asian literature.
Dehradun represents our Bento HQ in India. We work with the help of a local nonprofit. India has our largest community of Bento members. Our extended team and volunteers help us serve and build our membership. I’m manifesting a writing retreat in Dehradun. I was born and raised in the Himalayas, so it has a sense of place for me that never gets old. Plus, Ruskin Bond lives across a mountain!
Due to the spread of our members and authors, online events are an essential way to connect everyone in an accessible manner. The idea for this work was birthed in the pandemic, so we didn’t shy away from online workshops. It’s important because we didn’t want anyone to believe that they had to live in New York City or London to get access to books and literature. We wanted to make it accessible from Ratlam to Pflugerville and everything in between.
It is important to note that we are a two-year-old organization, and none of this work is possible without our members, volunteers and grant makers who support us. We partner with local businesses, creative organizations, and experts to make it scalable.
What do you love most about Peerbagh Stories? Why?
You can take a girl out of Peerbagh, but you can never take Peerbagh out of her. When we were displaced from Peerbagh, Srinagar (Kashmir) in 1990, I was a kid and did not know that we would never go back home. This space that I am building is home to me. Because Peerbagh will always represent my childhood before conflict and make me feel like I belong.
It was critical to my sister and I that our tagline (creating little joys and magical stories) represented joy and magic as opposed to the trauma porn that everyone seems to love. Even after her loss, this work will be a legacy to her love for storytelling, because in the end, stories are all that matter. She is alive in this work, forever. And maybe I am learning that life is not described by counting our breaths but by the stories we tell.
It’s my privilege and the work of my life to bring stories and oral traditions to families and children across the world. Creatively, we are the only organization that is contextualizing folk forms like Dastangoi and bringing them to families in English. We also make them entertaining and add props, dances like Kathak (a classical dance form), music, and poetry to tell the Dastaan. This is necessary for diaspora children who may not be fluent in other languages.
Children are invested in deep and rich storytelling. And it speaks to adults too who feel a sense of nostalgia. When someone sends us a note (even on Instagram) telling us how they were surprised by a story, or loved something, all the work feels worth it. I am so grateful for Peerbagh’s event attendees and Bento members who make this work possible.
What do you want Bento readers, your workshop attendees, and the general audience to take away from Peerbagh?
We want all our community members to know that their stories matter. We also want to gently nudge them toward authenticity. Who gets to tell whose story? When we’re selecting illustrators for each Bento story or reviewing submissions, we ask ourselves the question of why this is the best person to tell the story.
Often South Asia is seen as a monolith, and stories feel generalized to support a hypothesis or cultural stereotype coming from a sample size of one. It’s easy to miss underrepresented communities – by region, language, caste, class, and other intersections within South Asia. There is no one way to be South Asian. There is no reason for non-Kashmiris to be promoted over Kashmiris in writing stories about the valley. There’s no reason to call people Kashmiri when they’re Pahari or Dogri. There’s no reason to say Pashmina and then describe a dupatta or shawl from a different part of India. There’s no reason to write subcontinent languages in italics while no such love is extended to European languages.
It’s important to ask and know more about communities and run a sensitivity or fact check before publishing. It’s critical to write and tell stories from lived experiences and I still see that missing. The more diversity and nuance they see from us, the more I hope our emerging writers and young readers are encouraged to think critically about the stories around them. I also hope that through our work, people can understand that creative work thrives with community help. I am not promoting myself or my books but work from a community of creatives, and our kids need to see that.
What are some of your forthcoming events for the calendar year?
We have some Bento StoryLabs featuring writers Sandhya Acharya, Ambreen Butt-Hussain, and you, Suma. These are listed for September through December. We are running a storytelling workshop in Ann Arbor in November which is designed as a tween-parent engagement workshop to encourage creating together as a family. Apart from that, we will be announcing details of our upcoming workshops for 2026 at the end of the year.
Cynsational Notes
Upasna Kakroo was born in Srinagar and internally displaced as a part of the Kashmiri Pandit community in India. Her writing often talks about belonging, identity, and roots, drawing inspiration from songs and stories her grandmothers shared. With nearly 20 years of experience in marketing and communications, Upasna is passionate about folk storytelling and currently leads nonprofit Peerbagh. She has previously led strategy and marketing for organizations such as the University of Michigan, McKinsey, and Rocket Internet. She also founded a content marketing agency, Brandanew where she was named one of the top 42 women in tech. Upasna is an author of the recently published non-fiction book, Loal (Gulshan Publications, 2024) on Kashmiri folk songs. Her children’s book, Shaliya Discovers Coronavirus Frumpfchi was translated into seventeen Indian languages and was commissioned by the Government of India. She is the managing editor for Bento – the only South-Asian children’s magazine in print. Upasna has won writing scholarships and residencies from Centrum, the Writing Barn, SCBWI, and the Kweli Journal. She lives in Ann Arbor with her husband and son.
Suma Subramaniam is the author of several children’s books including the V. Malar series (Candlewick Press, 2024, 2025, 2027), My Name Is Long As A River (Penguin Workshop, 2024), and Crystal Kite Award Winner, Namaste Is A Greeting (Candlewick Press, 2022). Her poems have been published in the Young People’s Poetry edition of Poetry Magazine from Poetry Foundation. She is a volunteer at We Need Diverse Books and SCBWI Western Washington. When she’s not writing, she’s blogging about children’s books. Suma has an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Learn more at https://sumasubramaniam.com.