Amitava Kumar (born 17 March 1963) is an Indian writer and journalist who is Professor of English, holding the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College.

Kumar served as a mentor to journalist Kelly Stout and Alanna Okun, a senior editor at Vox, while they were students at Vassar.

His prize-winning book is A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb: A Writer’s Report on the Global War on Terror (Duke University Press, 2010; and as Evidence of Suspicion, 2009[8]).

[12] As a journalist, Kumar has regularly authored articles for newspapers and magazines across the world such as New Statesman, The Nation, The Caravan, The Indian Express and The Hindu.

[14] Kumar, Ruchir Joshi, Jeet Thayil and Hari Kunzru, were threatened with arrest for reading excerpts from Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which is banned in India, at the 2012 Jaipur Literature Festival.

[19] A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb was also judged the Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the Asian American Literary Awards.