Tishani Doshi was born in Madras, India, in 1975. She is the author of six books of fiction and poetry. At the age of twenty-six, an encounter with the choreographer Chandralekha led her to an unexpected career in dance. In 2006, her debut collection, Countries of the Body, won the Forward Poetry Prize for the best first collection. Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, her most recent collection, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and deals with coastal living, gender violence, memory, happiness, aging and what the point of poetry might be. Small Days and Nights, published by Norton, is a novel about family secrets, freedom versus duty, and a woman making her way alone in contemporary India. It was shortlisted for the Tata Fiction Award and is a New York Times Bestsellers Editor’s Choice. She divides her time between teaching at NYU Abu Dhabi and a beach in Tamil Nadu.