Kishwar Desai is an award-winning author and playwright, who writes both fiction and non-fiction. She worked in television as an anchor and producer for more than twenty years before becoming a writer. She is the chairperson of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, which set up the world's first Partition Museum at Town Hall, Amritsar. She also helped to instal the statue of Mahatma Gandhi outside Westminster in the UK.
Desai is the author of Darlingji: The True Love Story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt (2007). Her novel Witness the Night won the Costa First Novel Award in the UK, in 2010, and was followed by two others: Origins of Love (2012) and Sea of Innocence (2013). The trilogy featuring Simran Singh has since been optioned for a web series.
Desai's first work of political non-fiction, Jallianwala Bagh: The Real Story (2018), won critical acclaim and inspired exhibitions on the massacre in India, the UK and New Zealand. She also wrote a play, Manto!, which won the TAG Omega award for Best Play in 1999. In 2019, her play Devika Rani: Goddess of the Silver Screen was successfully staged in venues across India.
