Ilavenil Meena Kandasamy
Meena Kandasamy is a poet, fiction writer, translator, and activist who was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Her bold writing is centered mostly on feminism and casteism in contemporary India. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms. Militancy, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Gypsy Goddess. Her second novel, When I Hit You, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018. Her latest novel is Exquisite Cadavers. Her op-ed/essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, The White Review, Guernica, Al Jazeera, Financial Times, Himal Southasian, The Hindu, Outlook among other places. She divides her time between Tamil Nadu and East London. She represented India at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and was a Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at the University of Kent, UK.
Judy Balan
Judy Balan, is a comedy writer and author who debuted with the bestselling novel Two Fates: The Story of My Divorce, a parody of Chetan Bhagat’s Two States: The Story of My Marriage. She is also the author of the blog Woman and a Quarter. She is known for her self-deprecatory humour and apparent deep-rooted trauma of growing up in the 90s. She is a creative director and has also written non-serious columns about women’s non-issues for The Week.
Twinkle Khanna
Twinkle Khanna is an Indian author, newspaper columnist, interior designer, film producer and a former film actress. In 2015, she released her first non-fiction book, “Mrs Funnybones” which was declared a bestseller, making her India’s highest-selling woman writer that year. Her second book, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of short stories, one of which was based on social entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganantham was later made into National Award-winning feature film, Pad Man with the focus on dispelling taboos around menstruation. Her most recent book and first novel, Pyjamas Are Forgiving (Juggernaut Books, 2018) made her the highest-selling female author in India in the year 2018, according to Nielsen BookScan India. Last year, Twinkle launched Tweak India, a bilingual digital media platform for women.
Rashmi Bansal
Rashmi Bansal is a writer, entrepreneur, and motivational speaker. An author of 10 bestselling books on entrepreneurship which have sold more than 1.2 million copies and been translated into 12 languages, including Korean and Vietnamese. Rashmi is the # 1 business book author in India. Also, a youth expert, two of her best selling works – “Stay Hungry Stay Foolish” and “Connect The Dots” – deal with stories of entrepreneurs and have sold 400,000 copies between them. Stay Hungry Stay Foolish, the runaway bestseller on 25 MBAs from IIM Ahmedabad who went on to create successful businesses. Her other popular titles include ‘I Have a Dream’, ‘God’s Own Kitchen’ and ‘Touch the Sky’. Rashmi’s latest book ‘We Are the Champions’ was released at Jaipur Literature Festival 2020. Rashmi co-founded JAM (Just Another Magazine) which went on to become India’s most popular youth magazine.
Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan
A blogger and a writer, Madhavan writes under the pseudonym eM on her blog which is called The Compulsive Confessions. Author of five books, most recently Split and Before, And Then After, her first book was a semi-autobiographical piece of work titled “You Are Here”. She also runs the blog Compulsive Confessions. She lives with her cats in New Delhi. She is the daughter of N S Madhavan, the famous Malayalam writer. EM also wrote as a columnist for Youth Ki Awaaz as Aunty Feminist.
Preeti Shenoy
Preeti Shenoy is ranked among the top five highest-selling authors in India (according to the AC Nielsen survey) and is also on the Forbes longlist of the most influential celebrities in India. India Today has named her as being unique for being the only woman in the best-selling league. She is also an artist specialising in portraiture and illustrated journalling. Her short stories and poetry have been published in various magazines such as Conde Nast and Verve. Her books include A Hundred Little Flames, It’s All In The Planets, Why We Love The Way We Do, The Secret Wish List, The One You Cannot Have, and many others, most of which turned out to be huge bestsellers. Her work has been translated into many languages.