Wrestling Mania

Sandhya Rao is one of the finest writers for children in India. Her books have won awards and accolades: My Friend the Sea won the Ambitious Children’s Book Project award at the Berlin Children and Youth Literature Festival, 2005. My Mother’s Sari was chosen as an Outstanding International Book, 2007, by the United States Board for Books for Young People (USBBY) and the Children’s Book Council. Rights to the book have been sold for USA, Canada, Australia and the U.K. In 1996, she joined Radhika Menon to create multilingual books for children at a time when independent children’s publishing in India was nascent. She has written over 20 books. Chennai-based Sandhya has an eclectic taste in books, music and films and loves listening to stories, especially real stories. She works at The Hindu.

Srividya Natarajan received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Hyderabad in 1998, and spent the next seven years as an editor, writer, and illustrator of children's books. She has also taught and performed Bharatanatyam for many years. Srividya now lives in Canada where she teaches English at King's University College, University of Western Ontario, writes in her spare time and finds time for occasional collaborations with the Toronto-based inDance. Her first novel for adults, No Onions Nor Garlic was published by Penguin India.