If you think New York has lost its “where dreams are made of” spark, you’re not looking closely enough at Brooklyn—where new voices keep breaking through. One of them is Upasna Barath, a Bedford-Stuyvesant–based writer whose work is as fearless as it is funny.
Originally from Chicago, Barath has been steadily stamping her name across the five boroughs. In 2025, she collaborated on Hinge’s “No Ordinary Love” campaign, which splashed intimate love stories across the subway—an unlikely literary stage that catapulted her into the city’s cultural bloodstream and forced a creative reset. “I started getting invited to a lot of parties, and I was conflating the work with the social aspect, which is two different things. I would argue that you could be an incredible writer without ever leaving your house,” Barath told BK Reader.
Dance-obsessed and relentlessly curious, she gathers material everywhere: an underground rave, a corner bodega, a solitary walk. After her 2025 debut novella, Comedic Timing, Barath is deep into her second book—still under wraps, but rooted in family history. “I would say a lot of it's inspired from my mom's life more than mine. I actually interviewed a lot of people in order to write this book.”
She’s also frank about the economics of making art in New York. Barath considers herself a not-so-starving artist—helped, in part, by the New York Housing Lottery—but she’s quick to point out the system’s contradictions. She praises models abroad that reserve units for artists, citing Ireland, and asks a pointed question about the local program: Why is the affordable housing lottery not affordable for low-income New Yorkers?
In a borough that constantly remixes ambition with grit, Barath’s rise feels quintessentially Brooklyn: a writer carving space on her own terms, with a sharp eye for joy, absurdity, and the inequities that shape who gets to stay and create.
The following interview has been edited for clarity:
BKR: What makes a Brooklynite?
UB: I think what makes a Brooklynite is someone who's heavily invested in their community. I don't mean the friends that they're handpicking or curating, but I mean the people who are living in the unit next door to them, or the guy that runs the bodega or the smoke shop, or just talking to people that you know you have to see on a daily basis, building relationships with them, instead of viewing them as disposable or interchangeable.
BKR: Do you have a favorite neighborhood to stroll through?
UB: I love strolling around Greenpoint. I specifically love looking at all the Polish restaurants. It's so interesting to me that you have the techie white people living in the same neighborhood as the Orthodox and Polish people.
These are people with completely different philosophies and views on how to live life, and they're all in the same space.
BKR: What is your favorite nightlife joint in Brooklyn?
UB: It does change a lot. It's about the DJ. I would say, though, probably Nowadays, because I appreciate the “no phones on the dance floor, no talking” thing. And I appreciate how every time you walk in, you do an orientation where they're like, “everyone be respectful.” People think it takes long to get in because it's hard to get in. It's because there's a five minute orientation.
BKR: Ungatekeep a Brooklyn secret for me, whether it be a place, a fact, a person, or a thing. Something that kind of feels hidden to you about Brooklyn, that you have been keeping from everyone.
UB: Musclecars. I know that's not a place or a thing. I think they are the future of house music.
BKR: Who is the most Brooklyn person you know?
UB: I would say Rosie. She's the woman who works inventory at the grocery store beneath my apartment. She grew up by Grand Street Station. She is someone who she literally tells me she loves me every time.
BKR: What's one issue that you think is pressing the residents of Brooklyn, and how do you think it should be solved?
UB: I've been learning more about algorithmic pricing and how grocery stores, big grocery stores, are tracking consumer data so that they can specifically give they can give people specific prices based on their on their previous purchasing history.
A lot of people in this city are disabled and old, and they order from Instacart. Five people in the same household ordering from Instacart can have varying prices for the same order based on that algorithmic pricing. Which has been patented and which people are you know, companies are using because it helps them. They don't care about affordability, they care about profit. City-run grocery stores that Zohran proposed will be really interesting to see. Because, unfortunately, food is a basic necessity, and the fact that a box of cereal is like $6 is just outrageous.
