Nishant Batsha is the author of the forthcoming novel A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart (ecco/HarperCollins, July 2025). Set between California and New York at the dawn of World War I, A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart is an expansive and poignant story of love, radical ambition, and intellectual rebirth—all drawn from a lost American history.
His first novel, Mother Ocean Father Nation (ecco/HarperCollins) was a finalist for 2023 Lambda Literary Award, longlisted for a 2023 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and named one of the best books of 2022 by NPR. It also won Honorable Mention in the prose category of the 2024 Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Book Awards.
He is currently at work on a third novel, tentatively titled A Superfluous Man. The writing of this manuscript has been supported by a 2024 grant from The de Groot Foundation.
Nishant holds a PhD in history from Columbia University where he was a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. He also works as a ghostwriter for public officials, CEOs, and leaders across various industries. Material he has ghostwritten has appeared in the New York Times and Politico, among other publications. He lives in Buffalo, NY with his wife and two children.