Archives: Authors

Mihir S. Sharma was born in Delhi, and grew up in Chandigarh, Mumbai, Jamshedpur, and Kolkata. He was trained as an economist and a political scientist before dropping ignobly out of academia. Like many others unable to concentrate on a single topic long enough to write a dissertation, he drifted from one thing to another till he found the closest thing to paid unemployment in a capitalist society: journalism. He now writes and edits opinion for the Business Standard newspaper in New Delhi.

Leela Gour Broome enjoys playing with words, painting her puns into cartoons or cooking up real and imaginary yarns for children and anyone else who is willing to listen. She studied Western music and loves nature having experienced much of it first-hand in nine years of tea plantation life in South India. She thinks she is creative at craft, which she enjoys with her granddaughter. For sixteen glorious years, she conducted nature and environment camps for kids. She considers all her campers a part of her own family and, from all accounts, it’s a feeling that’s apparently mutual. She collects quirky, decorative cows and has them all over her farmhouse. She is married to a diehard gentleman farmer and lives on an organic, wooded farm outside Pune, with a menagerie of pets, resident and migratory birds and some wild animals. To know more about the author and her experiences in the forest of southern India, visit her blog www.fluteintheforest.blogspot.com.

Ali Akbar Natiq is among the foremost voices writing in Urdu today. He is the author of fifteen books
across the genres of fiction, poetry, biography and literary criticism. His work enjoys the rare honour of being both critically acclaimed and bestselling. It has been translated into English, Hindi and German, and featured in New York Times and Granta. His collection of short stories, Qaim Din (Oxford University Press, 2012), was awarded the UBL-Jang Literary Excellence Award in 2013. In addition to being an author, he is an accomplished architect.

Naima Rashid is an author, poet and translator whose work was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition and Best Small Fictions. She has translated three works from Urdu and French into English, and her own fiction and poetry are forthcoming 2024 onwards. Her writings have been widely published in reputed journals like Asymptote, The Scores, Wild Court, Poetry Birmingham and The Aleph Review. In addition, she is a collaborator with the UK-based translation collective, Shadow Heroes.

Desh Gaurav Sekhri is one of the only sports attorneys in India. He heads the sports law practice at J. Sagar Associates, a leading national bulge-bracket law firm, a position he has held since 2009. A junior national tennis singles finalist in India, his experience as an international-level athlete growing up in India and Canada has added to his overall domain knowledge and expertise. He is a regular columnist with Business Standard, Indian Express and Economic Times, writing primarily on the business of sports and sports law topics. He is involved with policy matters and is a core member of the sports task force for the Delhi government which recently drafted the national capital’s first-ever sports policy. He has also done extensive policy work for leading Indian business chambers on a variety of industry-related issues in sports. Sekhri holds a BA (Hon.) degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he captained the college and university tennis team. Later, he went to do a BA (with honours) from the University of Iowa on a tennis scholarship. He completed his Juris Doctorate in sports and corporate law from the William and Mary Law School, Virginia. He is admitted to the bar in India and in the state of New York. Sekhri lives in Delhi with his wife Madhavi and daughter Sanvi Ariya.

Shalini Srinivasan likes animals, walks and nonsense. Her first novel, Vanamala and the Cephalopod is a Crossword Book Award nominee and was featured in the prestigious White Ravens international catalogue.

Simon Choa-Johnston is the author of numerous plays produced and published in Canada. Among his many awards is Theatre BC’s National Playwrights prize, the City of Richmond’s Cultural Leadership Award, McMaster University’s Alumni Gallery and is the Gateway Theatre’s Artistic Director Emeritus. He was born and raised in Hong Kong where his family has lived for five generations since the 1860s. He studied at St. Joseph’s College in Hong Kong then immigrated to Canada where he graduated from McMaster University. After postgraduate studies in New York he returned to Ontario and has worked continuously in Canadian theatres as an artistic director, director and playwright. Simon lives in South Surrey, B.C. The House of Wives is his latest novel.

Khyrunnisa A., prize-winning author of children’s fiction, loves reading, writing and children. She created the popular comic character Butterfingers for the children’s magazine, Tinkle. Her three previous novels in the Butterfingers series are Howzzat Butterfingers! (2010), Goal, Butterfingers! (2012) and Clean Bowled, Butterfingers! (2015). This collection includes stories that have appeared in Tinkle in comic-strip form.
Some of her stories, for children and for adults, have been published in various anthologies by Puffin, Children’s Book Trust and Unisun Publications. A collection, Lost in Ooty and Other Adventure stories, was brought out by Unisun Publications in 2010. Her stories appear regularly in Dimdima and she has an ongoing fortnightly column, ‘Inside View’, in The Hindu Metroplus.
She worked as Associate Professor of English at All Saints’ College, Trivandrum, and is now a full-time writer. Visit her at www.khyrunnisa.com and connect with her at khyrubutter@gmail.com.

Amrita Shah is a journalist and writer. She has worked for Time magazine, edited Debonair and Elle and been a contributing editor with The Indian Express. She is the author of Hype, Hypocrisy & Television in Urban India and Ahmedabad: A City in the World. She is an alumna of the Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University and visiting faculty at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science,Bengaluru.

Ajay Chowdhury is a businessman and theatre director. He started directing plays in India and now runs a theatre company in London. He has served on various boards, including Arts Council England and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in the UK.