Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling author, poet, activist and teacher of writing. Her work has been published widely, in magazines and anthologies, and her books have been translated into twenty-nine languages. Several of her works have been made into films and plays. Her last novel was the award-winning bestseller, The Last Queen, film rights to which have been bought by a major production house. She lives in Houston with her husband, Murthy, and has two sons, Anand and Abhay. She teaches in the internationally acclaimed Creative Writing programme at the University of Houston