Beni Yanthan, who often writes under the name Yanbeni, has carved out a place for herself as a poet, essayist and academic while drawing from her roots in the indigenous Lotha-Naga tribe of Nagaland. Her words have travelled widely, published in journals and platforms such as Raiot, Sapiens, The Bangalore Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Hindu, Outlook India and Muse India. Her work covers poetry, essays, reviews and short stories, blending personal reflection with cultural memory and the lived realities of her community.
She currently works as an Assistant Professor of English at Nagaland University, where her academic interests centre on folk culture, vernacular literature, oral traditions and literary theory. This academic grounding adds another layer to her writing, allowing her to move between scholarly analysis and creative expression. Her dual role gives her a rare vantage point: she is both a chronicler and participant in the preservation and re-imagining of cultural knowledge.
Yanthan’s writing resists simplification. Each piece reflects her ongoing dialogue with history, identity and the fragile ways in which stories travel between generations. Her essays and poems have a way of bringing readers into close contact with the textures of lived life, while her critical work situates these voices in larger literary and cultural frames.
For Story Week 2025, she will travel from Mumbai to Sydney to take part in the festival’s multi-lingual stories program and perform on stage at the National Australian Poetry Slam Finals. The festival, running from 16 to 26 October across Sydney and the Blue Mountains, is a celebration of words in many forms, from slams and story dinners to conversations and performances. Yanthan’s contribution highlights the festival’s commitment to language diversity and the recognition that stories thrive when they are told in many tongues.
The inclusion of voices like hers speaks to Story Week’s theme this year: Grow Deeper. It is a call to move past surface impressions and enter into the richness of human experience. As Creative Director Miles Merrill put it, “With the Story Week theme Grow Deeper, we ask everyone to slow down, to carve out time and space for storytelling. Whether it’s at a dinner table, in the spotlight on a slam stage, or over a cuppa at lunch. We’re bringing stories back to the centre of community life, where they can feed, challenge and nurture us.”
For Yanthan, whose career spans both literature and teaching, that focus on depth is a natural fit. Her body of work connects academic rigour with creative sensibility, exploring what it means to belong to a tradition while navigating the pressures of a globalised world. The act of writing itself becomes both a practice of preservation and a tool for asking questions.
Her presence in Sydney will open a space for audiences to engage with perspectives not often heard in mainstream forums. As much as Story Week champions the performance of poetry and the energy of slams, it also creates room for quieter, reflective voices that carry the weight of history and community. Yanthan embodies that balance, standing at the meeting point of orality and writing, of scholarship and artistry.
Story Week’s program places her alongside poets and writers from across Australia and the world, in venues ranging from the Opera House to community centres. The audiences who gather will not only hear her poems but will also glimpse the traditions, struggles and resilience embedded in her work. Her words carry Nagaland with them, even as they resonate in Sydney.
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