Archives: Authors

Arundhati Venkatesh went to school in five towns and worked in four continents. Everywhere, she made up stories. Now she puts them down on paper. When she is not cooking up stories or dreaming of food, she haunts bookstores and libraries in Bangalore.

Yashodhara Lal is a bestselling author of several books, and a coach and therapist in private practice.

A graduate of SRCC-Delhi and IIM-Bangalore (2000-2002), she has two decades of leadership experience in the corporate world. She is internationally certified in Erickson Solution-Focused Coaching and in Transactional Analysis (CTA & P-TSTA – Psychotherapy). As a couples therapist, she has been in Advanced Training and the Mentorship Program with the Couples Institute, San Francisco.

Yashodhara is also a TEDx speaker, fitness instructor and yoga practitioner. Her vast body of fiction and memoir work includes the bestsellers Just Married, Please Excuse (2012) and How I Became a Farmer’s Wife (2016). Her book And How Do You Feel About That (2022), co-authored with Aruna Gopakumar, demystifies therapy for the Indian audience.

What They Don’t Tell You About Marriage is Yashodhara’s tenth book.

As a child, Lavanya Karthik spent all her time writing stories in her school notebooks and drawing the pictures to go with them. She is now a slightly older child, still making up stories and drawing pictures. You can find her wandering about the bylanes of Mumbai, nibbling on chocolate, chatting with street dogs and looking for her next book idea. She is the author of several books, including Neel on Wheels, A Walk with Thambi and The Lion’s Feast, and is the creator of the Ninja Nani series.

Shabnam Minwalla is a mother of three teenagers, an ardent saree-shopper and a Mumbai-holic. She has spent most of her life with words-editing her school magazine, working as a journalist with the Times of India and writing non-fiction. What she most enjoys, though, is writing fiction.

Many of her books for children and young adults-including When Jiya Met Urmila, Saira Zariwala is Afraid, Murder at Daisy Apartments and The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street-have won prestigious awards. Her non-fiction book on the Mumbai Neighbourhood of Colaba is very popular.

Shabnam was a student at St Xavier’s College in Mumbai and got her MA in Journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She was a Chevening Scholar at Wolfson College in Cambridge.

Arti Sonthalia loves books and stories, but if you ever see smoke coming out of her kitchen you know she is trying to cook something quirky and silly! And maybe you could drop by and try some of her strange food.

She already has a bunch of books, Big Bully and M-me (which was nominated for the Crystal Kite Asia Awards) Hungry To Read, Best Friends Forever (won the Ficci book of the year award 2020) Hungry To Play (shortlisted for the Neev
Awards 2020) and her new book Read Write Race.

If you scroll through YouTube looking for her, you’ll find her as a TEDx speaker. Besides reading and writing, Sonthalia enjoys long walks and chocolates too!

Natasha Sharma’s childhood had crazy episodes, featuring dogs, rabbits, ducks, guinea pigs, horses, buffaloes, and the occasional squirrel, all in her backyard.
She graduated in maths, did an MBA, worked as a brand manager and is now happily doing what she loves most-writing books for children.
You can find out more about Natasha at www.natashasharma.in.

Dr Devika Rangachari is an award-winning Indian writer whose Queen of Ice was on the White Raven list, won the Neev Young Adult Book Award, was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Puraskar, has been optioned for a movie and is part of the Penguin Classics series. Her other books include The Mauryas, Queen of Fire (Parag Honour List 2022); Queen of Earth (Parag Honour List 2021; shortlisted for the Neev, Sahitya Akademi and the JK AutHer Awards); The Train to Tanjore (shortlisted for the Neev Award); 10 Indian Monarchs Whose Amazing Stories You May Not Know; Tales of Love and Adventure; Swami Vivekananda—A Man with a Vision; Harsha Vardhana; The Merry Mischief of Gopal Bhand; The Wit of Tenali Raman and Growing Up (on the IBBY Honour List 2002). She was also the recipient of a prestigious national fellowship awarded by the ministry of culture to research aspects of gender and historical fiction in Indian children’s literature.

Devika also writes narrative non-fiction for adults based on her doctoral and post-doctoral research on gender in Indian history. Her academic works include From Obscurity to Light: Women in Early Medieval Orissa (Seventh to Twelfth Centuries ad) and Invisible Women, Visible Histories: Gender, Society and Polity in North India (Seventh to Twelfth Century AD). She has also published widely in academic journals, participated in national and international academic conferences, and been the recipient of several prestigious academic fellowships.

Anitha Balachandran makes a precarious living as a awardwinning animation filmmaker and illustrator. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally. Her present preoccupations include stories about animals, stories for and about children and of old people. You might pass her in the street if you happen to be in Delhi.

Anitha Balachandran makes a precarious living as a awardwinning animation filmmaker and illustrator. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally. Her present preoccupations include stories about animals, stories for and about children and of old people. You might pass her in the street if you happen to be in Delhi.