Archives: Authors

Sonia Mehta is a children’s writer who believes that sparking off a child’s imagination opens up a world of adventure. She has been writing for children for over two decades. Her body of work is wide-ranging-she created one of India’s first dedicated children’s newspaper sections; conceptualized the Cadbury Bournvita Quiz Contest for TV; and has written books, songs, poems and stories for leading publishers in India, several African nations, the USA and the UK.
She lives in Mumbai and runs Quadrum Solutions, a content company she co-founded. She is also the co-founder of PodSquad, a retail children’s edutainment brand that firmly believes that children learn best when they are having fun.
Most days, Sonia can be found pounding away at her computer-when she is not playing with her dachshunds, the two little loves of her life.

Alicia Souza has been referred to as a ‘happiness illustrator’ for the snippets of happy incidents, funny conversations or daily life musings she draws. She’s added it to her designation ever since as ‘commercial illustrator’ sounded rather dodgy! She’s been drawing professionally for just under a decade and has hundreds of products manufactured from her drawings through the studio she runs. Alicia was born and brought up in the Middle East and currently works and lives in Bengaluru with her husband, dog, guinea pig and lots of pencils. She writes her own author’s bio. It’s not a skill she’s terribly great at.

John Mohammed Butt is an Islamic scholar and broadcaster, noted as the first Westerner to graduate from Darul Uloom Deoband.

TOONZ ANIMATION INDIA LTD is one of the biggest animation and production houses in India.

Dinesh Narayanan is a Delhi-based journalist currently writing for The Economic Times. Previously, he was the Delhi bureau chief of Forbes India magazine. He cut his teeth as a business journalist reporting on financial markets and gradually shifted to writing on the political economy and occasionally pure politics. He is deeply interested in understanding the interplay of politics, society and business and the impact of these on our lives, both as individuals and collectively as a nation.

Sheikh Abdul Aziz Nuaimi, better known as the ‘Green Sheikh’, is a member of the Ajman royal family in the United Arab Emirates. His Highness has made a name for himself as one of the most resilient and vocal proponents of the environment.

Sadguru Patil
Sadguru Patil has been working for various Marathi newspapers since 1995. He has worked as chief reporter with Dainik Gomantak and is now the bureau chief with the Goa edition of Lokmat. He has covered politics extensively and all major political developments in Goa in that period.
Mayabhushan Nagvenkar
Known for his irreverence and occasional spells of unemployment, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar has been a journalist for nearly twenty-two years in Mumbai, Delhi and Goa. Currently, he is the state correspondent for the Indo-Asian News Service based in Goa, largely covering politics and reviewing books.

Known for his irreverence and occasional spells of unemployment, Mayabhushan Nagvenkar has been a journalist for nearly twenty-two years in Mumbai, Delhi and Goa. Currently, he is the state correspondent for the Indo-Asian News Service based in Goa, largely covering politics and reviewing books.

Ruth Vanita is the author of many books, most recently The Broken Rainbow: Poems and Translations (2023); the novel Memory of Light (Penguin, 2022), which she translated into Hindi as Pariyon ke Beech (Rajkamal); The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna and Species (Oxford University Press, 2022); Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriages in Modern India (Penguin, 2005; updated edition 2022). She has translated several works from Hindi to English, including Mahadevi Varma’s My Family (Penguin, 2021). She co-edited the path-breaking Same-Sex Love in India, and edited and translated On the Edge: A Hundred Years of Hindi Fiction on Same-Sex Desire (Penguin, 2023).

Dr Swapneil Parikh is a practicing physician in Mumbai and the co-founder of a healthcare start up. His practice focuses on reversing lifestyle diseases like diabetes and obesity. He is passionate about infectious diseases, medical literature and the future of technology in medicine.

Maherra Desai is a clinical psychologist and medical researcher. She has excelled in academics and psychometrics, and is the site manager of clinical research at the Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre, Mumbai. She is passionate about fitness, travel and voluntary social work.

Dr. Rajesh M. Parikh is the Director of Medical Research and Honorary Neuropsychiatrist at the Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre, Mumbai. He trained and taught at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in the U.S. and at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital in Mumbai. He has published research in leading international journals and is passionate about poetry, painting, photography, philosophy, linguistics, marine fish, and aviation. He has cumulatively won over 200 awards in academics and in his diverse activities.