An Author’s Afternoon on 26th March 2014 featured Namita Gokhale at Taj Bengal Kolkata. The session was presented by Shree Cement and hosted by Prabha Khaitan Foundation in association with Siyahi and t2. She was in conversation with the Wiccan author Ipsita Roy Chakraverti.

Namita Gokhale wrote her first book Paro: Dreams of Passion in 1984 at the age of 26. The book got international acclaim and shocked the Indian readers with her no-holds-barred writing about sex. Since then, she has come a long way. She has written twelve more books. Some of her books are Gods Graves and Grandmother, A Himalayan Love Story, The Book of Shadows and Shakuntala, the Play of Memory. Her recent book is a compilation of travel essays – Travelling In, Travelling Out.

Namita Gokhale was diagnosed with cancer when she was thirty five. Her husband died a few years later and the pain, death and illness have influenced some of the books she wrote. She admits to having written The Book of Shadows under strange circumstances and it is a ghost story.

Apart from being an author she wears many hats. She is a columnist, a publisher, founder of literary festivals like the Jaipur Literary Festival, Mountain Echoes (Bhutan) among others. She has launched translations of best-selling young authors like Amish, Ashwin Sanghi, Anuja Chauhan into seven Indian languages.