Sunny was born in Varanasi, India. She graduated from Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, in 1990 with a degree in English and American Literature. She has a Masters degree in Spanish Language, Literature and Culture from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a PhD from the Universitat de Barcelona. Now living in London, she is head lecturer in creative writing at the London Metropolitan University. She founded the Jhalak Prize, first awarded in March 2017, and its sister award the Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize (2021), to celebrate books by British or British resident BAME writers. She has contributed to a collection selected by Khushwant Singh, stories in honour of Ruskin Bond; American anthologies, The Drawbridge, International PEN, numerous academic journals and newspapers worldwide.
An expert on Bollywood, she was commissioned by the BFI to write a book on Amitabh Bachchan for their film star series; the first in the series to feature a Bollywood actor. Bachchan himself has blogged about the book, and it’s available here. She has recently completed a collection of stories linked by the theme of war, and a personal study of the Indian film industry, A BOLLYWOOD STATE OF MIND (coming out from Footnote Press in October 2023: https://footnotepress.com/product/a-bollywood-state-of-mind/