Hoshang Merchant is India’s pre-eminent voice of gay liberation. Born in 1947 to a Zoroastrian business family in Bombay, India, he graduated in 1968 with a major in English and a minor in the culture of India. On his mother’s side, he descends from a line of preachers and teachers.
Hoshang holds a master’s from Occidental College, Los Angeles, USA. At Purdue University, Indiana, USA, he specialized in the renaissance and modernism. After leaving Purdue in 1975, Merchant has attended the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Centre, Massachusetts, USA, and lived and taught in Heidelberg, Iran, and Jerusalem where he was exposed to various radical student movements of the Left.
He has studied Buddhism at the Tibetan Library, Dharamshala, India, as well as Islam in Iran and Palestine. Since 1979, seventeen of his books of poetry have been published. Secret Writings of Hoshang Merchant (OUP 2016) is his most recent publication. He recently retired from the University of Hyderabad, India, after twenty-six years of teaching.
