Uma Menon is a writer and law student from Winter Park, Florida.
Her first children’s book, My Mother’s Tongues, was published by Candlewick Press in February 2024, followed by Our Mothers’ Names in April 2025. My Mother’s Tongues received acclaim as a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year, South Asia Book Award Highly Commended Title, and a CCBC Choice Book.
Uma’s writing has been nominated thrice for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in over three dozen different publications, including The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and The Progressive. She was a 2020-2021 Encore Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project, advocating for intergenerational social justice. She also served as the first Youth Fellow for the International Human Rights Art Festival (IHRAF), where she collaborated with artists and activists across the world to advocate for human rights and started and edited IHRAF’s first Anthology of Youth Creativity on Human Rights & Social Justice.
Uma graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in Public and International Affairs in May 2024. She is now a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School.
