Perumal Murugan is an Indian writer, scholar and literary chronicler who writes in Tamil. He has written twelve novels, six collections of short stories, six anthologies of poetry and many of the non-fiction books. Ten of his novels have been translated into English: Seasons of the Palm, which was shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005, Current Show, One Part Woman, A Lonely Harvest, Trail by Silence, Poonachi or the Story of a Goat, Resolve, Estuary, Rising Heat, and Pyre.
Dr C. S. Lakshmi has been an independent researcher in Women’s Studies for the last 35 years. She has a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and has worked as a Research Officer in the Indian Council of Historical Research and has also been a college lecturer in Delhi for two years. She received the Ford Foundation Fellowship to work on a project entitled Illustrated Social History of Women in Tamil Nadu in 1981 and in 1992 she received the Homi Bhabha Fellowship to do a project on women musicians, dancers and painters. This research work has been brought out in two volumes by Kali for Women. She is also a renowned author of Tamil literary fiction under the pseudonym Ambai.
