Awards

Vinayak Varma is the author and illustrator of The Sunshower Song, Jadav and the Tree-Place, Angry Akku, and Up Down. He is the editor of the Strange Worlds! Strange Times! sci-fi anthology, and was the founding editor of Brainwave magazine. He has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and is a recipient of the Publishing Next Digital Book of the Year Award. His short stories and articles have appeared in Out of Print Magazine, The Deccan Herald, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, and Muse India, among other publications. His illustrations have appeared in several YA and children's books, including The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense, The Magic Store of Nu-Cham-Vu, Phiss Phuss Boom, The Vampire Boy, and Goodnight and God Bless. When he isn't making picture books, teaching art, or designing for craft beer brands, Vinayak sings and plays harmonica for the blues band Southern Discomfort.

Venita Coelho works with images, words and paint. She is a writer who has worked in film, television and literature. Her published work includes Dead as a Dodo, which won The Hindu Young World Good Books Award in 2016. The Washer of the Dead was long listed for the Frank O'Connor award. She is a screenwriter with films for Dharma Productions and Sanjay Leela Bhansali Productions to her credit. As an artist she works with charcoal and with acrylic paint on glass. She loves adventure; having converted a Tempo traveller into a caravan, she and her daughter are off to travel across India.