Namita Gokhale is a writer, publisher and festival director. She is the author of fourteen works of fiction and nonfiction. Her acclaimed debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, was published in 1984. The recent Things to Leave Behind has been described as her most ambitious novel yet. Other books include Gods, Graves and Grandmother, A Himalayan Love Story, The Book of Shadows, Shakuntala: The Play of Memory, Priya in Incredible Indyaa, The Habit of Love. The Book of Shiva and The Puffin Mahabharata are born out of her deep interest in Indian religion and mythology. Edited anthologies include In Search of Sita, Travelling In, Travelling Out and Himalaya, co-edited with Ruskin Bond. Gokhale is a founder and co-director of the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival and Mountain Echoes, the Bhutan Literature Festival. She is the director of Yatra Books, a publishing house specialised in translation. She has curated ‘Kitaabnama’, India’s only multi-lingual book show for the national channel Doordarshan. As a literary activist, she is passionately committed to showcasing the spectrum of writing across the Indian languages.