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Rupi Kaur Biography: Age, Career, Family and More

F4U Editorial Desk • Updated September 14, 2026 • 6 min read

Quick Info

Date of birth4 October 1992

Age32 Years

BirthplaceMunak Kalan, Hoshiarpur, Punjab

ProfessionPoet, Author, Illustrator, Photographer

NationalityIndian

Marital statusUnmarrried

FamilyParents (father worked as a truck driver); three younger siblings

Rupi Kaur Biography

Rupi Kaur is a Canadian poet, author, illustrator and photographer whose short, image-accompanied verses and candid explorations of trauma, healing and the

Early life and background

Rupi Kaur was born on 4 October 1992 in Munak Kalan, Hoshiarpur, Punjab. Her family moved to Canada when she was three years old, joining her father who had previously emigrated. The family settled in Brampton, Ontario, where Kaur grew up amid financial hardship in a one-bedroom basement apartment shared with her parents and three younger siblings.

English was not her first language and she struggled with fluency until about age ten. Raised in a Sikh household, Kaur grew up listening to and performing kirtan; she has said that the poetic nature of Sikh scripture shaped her early relationship with verse. Her mother practised painting and Kaur learned illustration from her, while her father worked as a truck driver and was active in human rights protests, which exposed Kaur to activism from a young age.

Kaur attended Turner Fenton Secondary School in Brampton and later studied rhetoric and professional writing at the University of Waterloo, where she completed a Bachelor of Arts. During her youth she read widely and developed an early interest in storytelling and poetry.

Career

Kaur began performing at poetry slams and open mics in 2009. She first published work anonymously during high school and later posted poems on Tumblr before taking to Instagram in 2014, pairing short free-verse pieces with simple line illustrations of her own.

She self-published her debut collection, Milk and Honey, via Amazon’s CreateSpace on 4 November 2014. The book gained broader attention in 2015 after Kaur posted a series of photographs from a university photography project that depicted menstrual blood on clothing and bedsheets. The images were temporarily removed by Instagram, sparking a public debate about censorship and bringing more attention to her work.

Following that surge in visibility, Milk and Honey was reprinted by a publisher and achieved widespread commercial success, selling in multiple languages and spending an extended period on The New York Times Best Sellers list. Her second collection, The Sun and Her Flowers, was released on 3 October 2017 and quickly reached high positions on bestseller lists; by 2020 it had sold over a million copies and been translated into several languages. Her third collection, Home Body, appeared in 2020 with her own illustrations and became one of that year’s best-selling books.

Kaur expanded into other projects: she wrote the introduction for a new Penguin Classics edition of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet in 2019, produced and created Rupi Kaur Live, a poetry show on Amazon Prime Video in 2021, and published a fourth book, Healing Through Words, on 27 September 2022. She has performed at events such as the London Book Fair and the Jaipur Literary Festival. In 2023 she contributed an opinion piece to The Washington Post and wrote and narrated an original poem for the short film Rise, produced in collaboration with Hello Sunshine.

Throughout her career Kaur has been associated with Instapoetry: short, accessible poems often presented alongside minimalist illustrations. Her subject matter regularly addresses survival, feminism, relationships, immigration and healing from trauma. She favors lowercase typography and minimal punctuation as a stylistic choice meant to reflect aspects of her cultural and linguistic background.

Public profile

Kaur’s work has generated both substantial popular acclaim and critical scrutiny. She has been a New York Times bestselling author and was included on a 30 Under 30 media list in 2018. In 2018 she was inducted into The City of Brampton’s Arts Walk of Fame, and U.S. publication The New Republic named her writer of the decade in 2020. Press coverage has noted significant sales figures and reported that she earned substantial income from poetry sales in 2018.

Her work and public acts—such as the 2015 photographs addressing menstrual stigma—have sparked wide conversation about censorship, gender and cultural taboos. Kaur has also faced critique from other writers and poets, including accusations about stylistic similarities and questions about originality.

Personal life

Kaur is unmarried and identifies with her Sikh heritage. She has described health challenges, including endometriosis, which affected her throughout her life and studies. She chose to use the surname Kaur as a public statement tied to Sikh identity and the name’s role in rejecting caste.

Latest updates

In recent years Kaur has continued to publish and produce work across different media. Her 2020 collection Home Body was a best-seller, she produced a live poetry show for Amazon Prime Video in 2021, and Healing Through Words was published in 2022. In 2023 she published a newspaper opinion piece and contributed to a short film project for which she wrote and narrated a poem.

Her writing remains prominent on social media and in contemporary conversations about poetry, representation and the boundaries between personal experience and artistic expression.
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Recent Work

Home Body

Third poetry collection published in 2020 with illustrations by Kaur; one of the best-selling books of 2020.

2020
Rupi Kaur Live

A poetry show produced by Kaur for Amazon Prime Video, released in 2021.

2021
Healing Through Words

Fourth book published by Simon & Schuster on 27 September 2022.

2022
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Career Highlights

  1. Self-published Milk and Honey (2014), which became a New York Times bestseller and sold in multiple languages.
  2. The Sun and Her Flowers (2017) sold over a million copies by 2020 and was translated into several languages.
  3. Named writer of the decade by The New Republic (2020).
  4. Inducted into The City of Brampton’s Arts Walk of Fame (2018).
  5. Created Rupi Kaur Live, a poetry show on Amazon Prime Video (2021).
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Frequently Asked Questions

When was Rupi Kaur born?

4 October 1992

What is Rupi Kaur known for?

Poet, Author, Illustrator, Photographer

What is Rupi Kaur’s marital status?

Unmarrried