A beautifully rendered debut memoir of family, legacy, conservation, the natural world—and those who inhabit it. (Milkweed Editions, 2025)
As a civil engineer, Sangamithra Iyer knows about resilience from studying soils and water. As an animal rights activist, she advocates for a revolution in how we value and relate to other species. And as the child of immigrants from India, she searches for submerged histories.
Animated by a series of questions—How do we disentangle ourselves from systems of harm? Is it possible to grasp the scale of planetary sorrow and emerge with truth and love as our guides, rather than despair? What is the relationship between individual action and systemic change?—this memoir takes the form of three meandering rivers, each written as a letter. Addressing the first of them to her grandfather, Iyer assembles the story of a man who embraced Gandhi’s philosophy and went to work developing wells in Tamil Nadu. In a second letter, addressed to her father, she explores their shared interest in cultivating compassion for all beings. And then in a final letter, addressed to readers, she braids these explorations of her familial past with her own experiences as a woman of color and citizen of the world, always seeking ways to move beyond resignation and restore flow.
A lyrical story of lineages and an urgently needed reckoning with the ways bodies are both controlled and liberated, Governing Bodies is a timeless work with profoundly timely relevance.
Where to buy:
- Milkweed Editions (Publisher)
- Bookshop.org (Support indie bookstores nationwide)
- Kew & Willow Books – NYC (I can sign and personalize copies for you)
- Support your favorite independent bookstore
- Request from your local library
Praise for Governing Bodies:
[An] evocative and whip-smart memoir . . . Governing Bodies provides a crucial voice in a time of increasing peril.”—Booklist, starred review
About the Author
Sangamithra Iyer is the author of Governing Bodies: A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed (Milkweed Editions 2025), a lyrical reckoning of the ways bodies—human, animal, water— are controlled and liberated. She is a writer and a licensed professional civil engineer who holds a B.E. in Civil Engineering from the Cooper Union , an M.S. in Geotechnical Engineering from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, where she was a recipient of a Hertog Fellowship. She is the recipient of a Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a Cafe Royal Foundation Literature Grant and a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant.
Sangu served as the Assistant Editor of Satya magazine and is the editor of The Long View, a special anniversary edition of Satya. She considers herself to be a plant eating primate who has been humbled to be in the presence of great apes. She has volunteered at primate rescue and rehabilitation sanctuaries in the U.S. and in Africa. Sangu served as an Associate for the environmental action tank Brighter Green, focused on sustainability, equity and rights. She is the recipient of scholarships to workshops in New Journalism, Historical Narrative, and Voice at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, MA and a Literature Travel/Study Grant from The Jerome Foundation. She was a finalist for the 2016 Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature. She was awarded a residency from the Camargo Foundation with support from Jerome Foundation and Art Matters.She was awarded a Pushcart Prize and an Emerging Writer Fellowship to Aspen Summer Words 2018
As an engineer and planner she is interested in issues related to nature based stormwater management, water supply infrastructure planning, watershed protection, waste management, seismic stability, climate change, affordability, animal protection, wildlife coexistence and sustainable cities.
Her work has been published by Conjunctions, Creative Nonfiction, Kenyon Review, n+1, Hippocampus Magazine, and others. Her writing explores issues related to animals, social and environmental justice and the intersection of the personal and planetary grief. She received a Culture and Animals Foundation Grant for The Literary Animal Project.
Contact: sangu.iyer[at]gmail[dot]com
Represented by: Anjali Singh at Anjali Singh Literary
Publicist: Morgan Larocca
Book and cake photo above by Gia McKenna at Gloria Steinem’s home.