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Bhanu Kapil is a poet, and author of books, including The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (2001), Incubation: A Space for Monsters (2006), and Ban en Banlieue (2015).

Kapil's first book, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, was written in the late 1990s. She has cited Salman Rushdie's 1980 Booker Prize win as a formative experience for her: "...perhaps then, for the first time, I understood that someone like me: could. Could look like me and write.". In early 2015, The Believer held a round-table discussion of her work over the course of three days.

Kapil's work can be difficult to classify, occupying a space between poetry and fiction. 2009's Humanimal: A Project for Future Children took its inspiration from the nonfiction account of Amala and Kamala, two girls found "living with wolves in colonial Bengal." Douglas A. Martin has described Incubation: A Space For Monsters as "a feminist, post-colonial On the Road." Kapil also contributed the introduction to Amina Cain's short story collection I Go To Some Hollow. Her creative work also encompasses performance art and her public readings sometimes blur the line between a traditional reading and performance. Her poetry appeared in a collection edited by Brian Droitcour that was produced as part of the New Museum's 2015 Triennial.