Easterine Kire was born in March 1959 in Kohima, Nagaland, India. She belongs to an Angami Naga family, one of the major ethnic groups of Nagaland. She is a novelist, short story writer, and poet, widely recognised as one of the most important literary voices from North-East India. Though originally from India, she currently lives in Norway.
A major focus of her writing is the life, culture, and history of the people of North-East India, especially the Naga community. One of her significant contributions to literature is her effort to preserve Naga oral traditions by converting them into written forms, thereby safeguarding the cultural memory of her people.
Kire is also known for performing poetry. She experiments with jazz poetry and performs with a music group called Jazzpoet, blending spoken word with jazz.
Her first major literary work was Kelhoukevira (1982), a collection of poems. This book is historically significant as the first Naga poetry book published in English.
Her novel A Naga Village Remembered (2003) marked another milestone, as it was the first novel written in English by a Naga writer.
She later wrote several important novels, including A Terrible Matriarchy (2007), Mari (2010), Bitter Wormwood (2011), Don’t Run, My Love (2017), and Walking the Roadless Road: Exploring the Tribes of Nagaland (2019).
Apart from novels and poetry, she has also written children’s books, articles, and essays. Her children’s book Son of the Thundercloud received the Sahitya Akademi Award. She has also translated more than 200 Naga oral poems into English, helping to bring traditional Naga literature to a wider global audience.
The themes of her works often reflect the harsh and unpleasant realities of life in Nagaland, including the impact of colonial atrocities, discrimination, and political conflict. Her writings also explore the struggles of the Naga people and their fight for identity and freedom, while highlighting the region’s complex social and cultural history.
WORKS CITED
Channeling.” YouTube, uploaded by Channeling, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGXKx2m4zZc.
Kire, Easterine. Sky Is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered.
New Delhi: Speaking Tiger Books, 2018.
Dr Aswathy Aravindakshan is a teacher, bilingual writer and artist with over two decades of experience in teaching English language and literature. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of English at NSS College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Her blog, ashlit.in brings together academic resources, creative writing in Malayalam and English, and visual art. The platform features lecture notes, study materials, poems, reflections, short prose, and a curated collection of her paintings. Through this space, she seeks to foster learning, creativity, and meaningful engagement with literature and the arts.
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