Satendra Nandan was born in Nandi, Fiji, of Indian background, and studied at the universities of Delhi, Leeds, London and the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. At ANU, he completed a doctoral thesis titled 'The Image of the Artist in Modern Literature' (with special reference to the fiction of Patrick White) which he revised for publication in the mid 1980s. He taught at the University of the South Pacific from 1969 until 1987 when he became the Minister for Health, Social Welfare and Women's Affairs in the Coalition Government of Fiji until the coup by Colonel Rambuka. He was elected to Parliament in 1982 and again in 1987, and was Fiji's first Labour member of parliament (MP).
In Australia he took up a Fellowship in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University, Canberra, and later became senior lecturer and Deputy Head, Centre for Communication and Cultural Studies at the University of Canberra. He has been president of the Canberra branch of PEN International, a member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) and a founding member of the Fiji Writer's Association (FWA).
He edited Language and Literature in Multicultural Contexts (1983), the ACLALS Fifth Triennial Conference Proceedings, Creative Writing from Fiji (1985) (with Stanley S. Atherton) and Silverfish New Writing 2 : An Anthology of Stories from Malaysia, Singapore and Beyond (2002).
