Her father's work with the government meant that the family regularly moved, living in cantonments and outposts including Dehradun, Dibrugarh, Along and Teju.

[2] Singh worked as a journalist and management executive in Mexico, Chile, and South Africa, before returning to India in 1995 to focus on writing.

Before her appointment as Professor in 2020, Singh was Senior Lecturer and Course Leader in Creative Writing at the London Metropolitan University.

Because debate is an imperialist capitalist white supremacist cis heteropatriarchal technique that transforms a potential exchange of knowledge into a tool of exclusion & oppression.”[6][7] In 2021, Singh, along with Monisha Rajesh and Chimene Suleyman, received racist abuse on social media as a result of raising concerns about depictions of autism and of students of colour in Kate Clanchy's book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me.

Singh's debut novel, Nani's Book of Suicides, won the Mar De Letras Prize in Spain in 2003.