About

Mythili Rao is a journalist, audio producer, and book critic. She is currently managing editor of Novel, a podcast company based in London.  She was previously executive producer of the Guardian’s daily news podcast, “Today in Focus,” which she helped launch in the fall of 2018. In 2020, the show won the gold award for Best Current Affairs Podcast at the British Podcast Awards. 

Before moving to London, Mythili was a producer at “The New Yorker Radio Hour,” a weekly radio show and podcast from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker magazine hosted by editor David Remnick.  At WNYC, she also contributed reporting to “On the Media” and NPR’s “Morning Edition”; hosted live events at the Greene Space and other venues; and managed a team of producers on “The Takeaway,” the station’s national news show, broadcast daily on hundreds of radio stations across the US.

She has written about books and culture for The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Words Without Borders, Publishers Weekly, and others. In 2015, she travelled to Seoul to report on issues of translation and propaganda in Korean literature for The New Yorker as the recipient of an International Center for Journalists reporting fellowship.

Mythili started her career at CNN, where she wrote breaking news stories for CNN.com as a news assistant.  She studied Political & Social Thought and English as a Jefferson Scholar at the University of Virginia, and holds a masters in English Language & Literature from New York University.  She grew up in Poquoson, Virginia.