Nepali poet documents diaspora stories through words and film

Moharaj Sharma has spent two decades listening. As a poet, journalist, and documentarian, he's built a career around the idea that stories matter — especially the ones that get left out of the main conversation.

Right now, he's the News Editor at AP1 Television in Nepal, where he also hosts a weekly literary segment that brings writers and thinkers onto national television. But his influence reaches far beyond the studio. He's documented the lives of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees who spent decades in camps in eastern Nepal before being resettled globally. He's researched the linguistic roots of Nepali and Sanskrit. He's won recognition from literary institutions across the US, South Korea, Bhutan, and India. And he's written poetry that speaks to identity and belonging in a way that resonates across Nepal and its diaspora worldwide.

How three forms became one voice

Sharma sees poetry, journalism, and documentary as three sides of the same impulse: to tell truth in a way that lands in the chest, not just the head. Poetry, he believes, speaks to the joys and sorrows of society in ways that subtlety allows. Journalism brings honesty and respect for authentic voices. Documentary lets him blend the factual rigor of reporting with the human sensitivity of a poet's eye.

That combination shapes everything he does. When he documented Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees, he wasn't just recording facts — he was capturing how a community kept their pride and remained politically active in their resettled countries, even after losing everything. How they preserved their language and culture in the face of displacement that lasted decades.

Nepal itself — with 142 ethnic groups and over 120 languages — taught him early why this work matters. He's traveled through the UK, USA, South Korea, India, and Indonesia, watching Nepali-speaking communities work to hold onto their heritage while building new lives. That tension, between preservation and adaptation, between home and belonging elsewhere, has become central to his writing.

The media responsibility he sees now

Sharma is clear-eyed about what's changed in media. Digital platforms have broken the old center-periphery divide — more voices can emerge now, which is real progress. But that's also created new responsibilities for journalists, editors, and cultural workers. They're navigating a landscape of confusion, exaggeration, and commercial pressure, trying to nurture literary culture in a system not always designed to protect it.

He sees media as vital to promoting Nepali literature and sparking genuine debates about new ideas and global practices. It's not glamorous work. It's the slow work of bringing writers into conversation, of treating language and culture as things worth protecting.

His forthcoming poetry collection will continue this thread — exploring identity, social change, and the tension between tradition and modernity. He's drawing on two decades as an editor and his own experience of witnessing the diaspora's search for identity, the pain and hope of that journey. It's the kind of work that only happens when someone decides to listen closely and write what they find.